


Heart of Fire

by Foot_chan



Series: Waking The Demon [4]
Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Demons, F/M, Hellhounds, NXT - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Characters from previous stories will probably make appearances, Raw - Freeform, Sanity, Slow Burn, WWE - Freeform, Waking The Demon Series, smackdown, the shield - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-03 11:09:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 36,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15817680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foot_chan/pseuds/Foot_chan
Summary: *** I have NOT given up on/abandoned this story. It's been a few weeks since I've updated, but it's because I'm taking time to process my emotions on Joe's whole situation and cannot bring myself to write Roman's character again just yet. Just give me a couple more weeks, and I promise I'll update. Thank you! ***Fae wakes up alone in a forest with no memories of who—or what—she is. She can't even understand the language being spoken by the hikers who found her. That is, until a friendly tree sprite instilled a little knowledge into her mind.After she is taken to a near by hospital, her only goal is to find out what she is, and figure out a way to get the magic resting inside of her to flame to life.Roman was living a semi-peaceful life with his pack-mates, content with settling disputes of weaker demons and upholding justice in the world around him. But what happens when the strange Nikki Cross comes asking for the pack of hellhounds' help? Can they survive whatever is killing other demons in Scotland?Their paths will cross, their fates destined to intertwine. But are they meant to stay that way?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! I have to start off by saying thank you to everyone who reads this! All of the kind words is what makes me continue to post my writing! =D
> 
> I also have to mention that this story can be read as a stand-alone, but (if you haven't already) you may want to read the first installment of this whole world I've built, Waking The Demon!
> 
> A quick note for those of you who _have_ read Waking The Demon, but it's been a while:  
>  In the epilogue, I had mentioned that Seth had a pregnant wife at home. Well, that changed! I left him single when I started writing this one and ideas started floating around my head. 
> 
> I will be updating this once a week (on Monday's)! I hope you enjoy it!

The woman felt a hand brush against her face as her eyelids fluttered open, revealing dark violet irises that slowly moved to investigate her surroundings. She was lying on the ground, the dry grass covering her like a barricade from the intruders. Trees shot up into the sky, blocking most of the sunlight from reaching the earth except for the one spot she was lying in. The air was warm and humid, but the woman didn't feel bothered by it. The only thing she felt was an extreme thirst and confusion.

She wasn't sure where she was or who was with her. She heard voices talking above her, but couldn't understand what they were saying. She had never heard the language they were speaking, but their gazes seemed concerned as they looked back and forth between each other, pointing down to her every few seconds.

Suddenly, the woman felt a soft breeze blow along her forehead. She turned her gaze up to see a tiny tree sprite smiling down at her, the little wings on the creature beating fast as it flew away. It was almost as though the sprite had gently forced new information into the woman's pounding head, because she could understand the voices after that, and she realized that they were coming from humans.

“Okay, I've called an ambulance,” one man said as he placed a small object back into the pocket of his jeans. A phone, the woman thought to herself, confused.

“I wonder who dumped her here?” the other man asked as he leaned down to open his backpack, placing a blanket over the woman's naked figure. “Hey, you're awake.” He smiled, his hazel eyes crinkling as he straightened the blanket over her body.

The woman didn't move. She didn't speak. She wasn't sure what these men were doing, or why she was with them in the first place.

“Are you okay?” the first man asked as he crouched down beside his friend. “What's your name?”

She thought for a minute. Her name. She knew that she had to have a name, but nothing was coming to her mind. As she tried to remember her past, she drew a blank.

“Maybe she's in shock,” one of the men guessed.

“It's okay, we're going to stay with you until help gets here,” the man with the blanket told her, sitting down beside her on the ground.

After a while of them trying to ask her questions and her answering with silence, one of the men stood back up and waved his hands. “There are the EMT's. It doesn't look like they could get the ambulance up here.”

“Help is here now,” the other man said as he smiled again.

The woman watched as two other men ran up and started checking her for broken bones or injuries. She let them look her over without a fight, not feeling any ill intentions to their actions. It was only when one of them started to lift her from the ground that she realized they intended on moving her.

One of the men placed his hands under her, and she started growling. The man flinched, but didn't let her go as he picked her up, so the woman's growls grew louder.

“It's okay, ma'am,” he said as he tightened his grip around her and walked down the small trail on the mountain to the ambulance, trying not to trip over rocks or tree roots as he made his way. “We're just trying to help you.”

The woman wasn't sure why, but she barred her teeth in his direction as they approached the vehicle. That was what her instincts told her she needed to do. She made an attempt to jump from his arms, but he held on tight. She started throwing her fists then, finally able to get her feet on the ground after having hit the man in the face, but he still held onto her waist. Through her struggling, she could hear him call out to the other man—something about a syringe—but she didn't understand what he meant. When she felt a little prick in her shoulder, she realized that they must have used something to make her sleepy. Some kind of magic, she was sure.

Her eyes suddenly got heavy as her body drooped, allowing the men to place her into the ambulance and take her away from her resting place.

 

Doctor David Baker walked out of the room where he had just examined the woman from the forest. She had no cuts, no bruises, no broken bones. The only thing he could do for her was give her fluids in an IV and try to figure out what had happened to her when she woke up. The tranquilizer that the paramedics had used hadn't yet worn off, so she was still sound asleep.

“Who's in there?” Kathleen, one of the nurses—as well as David's wife—asked as she walked up to David and pointed to the woman's room.

“Jane Doe. She's the one that tried to attack the paramedics.” David pinched the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb as he took a deep breath in. “She didn't tell the men who found her anything. She didn't speak at all.”

“She tried to attack them?” Kathleen asked as she slowly opened the door to the woman's room.

“They said she was growling at them and trying to bite them,” David answered as he followed Kathleen into the dark room.

“Was there anything... else that they noticed?” Kathleen asked as she stared down to the woman, who was dressed in a hospital gown, still sleeping. 

David didn't have to wonder about the pause in Kathleen's question. He knew what she had meant since she had explained to him that magic existed, as well as demons. “They didn't say anything about glowing eyes or magic,” he whispered as he placed his hand on Kathleen's shoulder. 

“I just don't want anything causing us anymore trouble.”

“Can't you check to see if she has magic?” David asked as he looked down to his wife's storm cloud colored eyes. 

Kathleen stopped for a moment, thinking over his suggestion. After everything that had happened to her and her family, she found that it was always better to be safe than sorry. Normal humans didn't usually go around growling at someone trying to save them, so why not make sure? 

Kathleen had the ability to siphon magic from beings, thanks to events in her past, so she could easily check to see if this woman had any to take. If the woman was a human, Kathleen knew it wouldn't hurt her. If the stranger was a demon, Kathleen didn't plan on taking her magic after she found it. Instead, she would get the patient better and out of the hospital as quickly as possible.

Taking another step toward the hospital bed, Kathleen reached over to place only the tips of her fingers against the woman's warm, suntanned skin. She closed her eyes and focused, searching for a thread of magic in the contact. When she felt it, she dropped her hand.

“David, don't let anyone else see to this woman. And get her out of here as soon as you can. I don't know what she is, but she isn't human.” Kathleen turned and walked out of the room, David on her heels.

 

Chapter 1  
_My body felt warm as I huddled down into the grass, watching the tree sprite fly over me, her scared expression only growing more terrified as she looked out through the trees. I couldn't see anything over the tall grass, but I knew that I should have been just as worried as the sprite. I felt significantly smaller than I did when I awoke in the forest earlier, but I wasn't sure why. I did know that the screams I heard were closer than I wanted them to be._

_I saw smoke start to rise through the trees, but before I could see anything else, the sprite looked down to me and waved her hand in front of my face. The last thing I remembered was the sprite's face, tears spilling from her eyes._

 

I felt light headed and dizzy as I opened my eyes against the bright sunlight coming in through the window. I wasn't even sure how I knew what a window was, but I was sure it had something to do with the information that the tree sprite had placed into my mind. I could suddenly understand those humans once she had gifted me the knowledge, but it seemed like she had forgotten to add in the part about who I was. Maybe that was why she was in my dream, I thought to myself as I mentally checked my body for injuries. I had seen her when I first woke up, so she was there in the dream, crying for some reason.

I wasn't even sure if the sprite knew who I was, though.

It was a scary thought. When one of the men had asked me for my name, I couldn't answer him. Not because I couldn't speak, but because I didn't know my own name. I didn't know anything about myself when I awoke in the forest. 

Raising my hands to my face, I noticed that there was some kind of needle in my hand. Panic hit me when I realized there was stuff going through it and into my body. I jumped from the bed and pulled the needle out, unsure of what kind of poison the humans could have been injecting me with. The last time one of them had stuck me with a needle, it made me feel really heavy before I lost consciousness all together. When I pulled the needle out, however, a beeping noise started. I looked around in an attempt to figure out what it was, but I couldn't tell which machine it was coming from.

“What are you doing?” a female voice asked, causing me to quickly turn in her direction. The motion made my head spin and I lost my balance, almost falling to the floor. Luckily, the woman caught me and guided me back to the bed. The contact of her hands made me cringe, but I let her lead me back to a sitting position on the side of the bed before I turned, luckily causing her to let go of my arm.

“Where am I?” I asked her as I settled back into the bed, unsure of the words on my tongue. I knew they were right, but actually speaking them sounded strange. That was the only language I knew, though. What language was I used to speaking?

“You're in a hospital,” she explained as she picked the needle out of the floor and messed with the tube it was connected to. She didn't make an attempt to put it back into my hand. She was also obviously trying to keep from turning her back to me.

“A hospital... where sick people go.” More facts started coming through my thoughts as I fought to speak. My throat felt rough and my mouth was dry. “But I'm not sick. I'm fine.”

The nurse stopped and looked me over, the slight wrinkles on her face growing deeper with concern as she took a small step toward me. “You can leave if you feel okay. I'm just asking that you don't cause any problems on your way out.”

“Do you know how to get back?” I asked her, thinking that if I went back to the forest to find the tree sprite, maybe she could tell me what was going on.

“Get back to where they found you?” she asked as she looked through some papers on a table beside the bed.

“Yes.”

Looking back to me, she answered, “All I know is that they found you on a hiking trail. How long were you there?”

“I don't know.” I tried to think back. How did I get to that spot? How long had I been laying there? I was still drawing a blank.

“What were you doing when you went there?” More questions from her.

Again, there was nothing in my memory. I moved my hands to my head, clutching my hair as I felt frustration build up inside of me. I couldn't get my brain to function correctly, no matter how hard I tried.

“Calm down.” The woman sounded scared as she took a step back from me. That was when I realized that I had started growling again.

Taking a deep breath, I calmed my emotions. “I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am.”

Suddenly, her face took on a sympathetic look. “Do you even remember your name?”

That was the same thing the men had asked me. Closing my eyes, I tried to go back into my memories. With a start, I remembered hearing a voice. It was a female voice, but I couldn't recall the face that went with it. I could just tell that her soft voice was full of love as she spoke. I could hear her saying a name.

“Fae.” I opened my eyes again, watching as the nurse pulled a small cup from the same table with the papers and walked over to the sink at the other end of the room. “I'm pretty sure it's Fae.”

“You don't know what you are, Fae?” she asked as she filled the cup with water, then brought it back to me. I took it from her and gulped down the water like I hadn't had a sip in centuries. I wasn't even sure if that was entirely untrue.

Instead of trying to remember, I answered without thought after giving her the cup back. “I don't.”

“I can tell you that you aren't a human.” Her words were obvious to me. It was deep in my instincts that I wasn't a human. I just wasn't sure what else I could be. Was I also a sprite? Is that why the tiny creature helped me?

“Do you feel any magic inside of your body?” she asked, watching me expectantly.

“I don't even know how to feel magic. I know I have to have some, but I don't know if I've ever even used it.” I couldn't think back to a time when I had used my magic, but I knew it was there. If I could use it, maybe that could give me a hint as to what I was, I thought.

“I felt it inside of you. You just have to figure out how to bring it out yourself,” she said as she sat the cup back on the table and took a step toward the door. “If you want to stay here and rest for a while, you can. I'm not going to make you leave if you don't even know where you're going.”

I thought about her offer, nodding my head as I resigned myself to the fact that she was right. If I stayed and got rid of the light headed feeling, maybe then I would remember more about my past, I thought. 

She left the room then, letting me close my eyes against the brightness beaming in through the window. I tried to concentrate on the magic that I knew was inside of my body, feeling it deep in my soul, but I couldn't make it do anything. I wasn't sure how I needed to focus it to bring out any abilities I may have had.

I released a frustrated sigh as I threw my back against the bed, aggravated with my situation. I remembered the woman's voice again, but couldn't bring back anything other than her saying that name. The voice made me feel comforted, though, so I held onto the sound of it as I let myself slip into sleep. As I lost consciousness, I couldn't help but to feel an extreme heat growing inside of me.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Roman** _

_Roman looked around the deep cave, watching as a few of the eldest hounds huddled together near the entrance. He knew they were discussing what they needed to do about the oncoming threat. Despite his young age, Roman knew what was coming their way._

_Balor._

_Looking to his left, Roman watched as Seth's mahogany eyes lit up. The small pup was staring at the elders, seemingly waiting to find out what his orders would be for when Balor showed up, but Roman knew Seth was probably trying to calculate his own plans as to what they should do when the self-proclaimed Demon King arrived._

_Balor was the strongest demon roaming the planet, killing other demons just for fun. Once he set his sights on a group of demons, they were doomed. Normally._

_To Roman's right, Dean was pacing back and forth, his movements rigid as the beige colored hound waited to join in on a fight he knew he couldn't win._

They act like just because we're young, we don't need to help.

_Roman heard Dean's impatient voice in his mind as the hound stopped his back and forth movements to look at the other two. Dean's cobalt blue eyes moved from Roman to Seth, waiting for a plan of their own._

_They were young, the youngest three pups in the pack, but they still knew they could help. At least, they thought they could._

_Roman remained silent as he took in the tension surrounding them. He could feel all of the others' emotions even though they were all trying to hide them, which was next to impossible with how wound up they all were. Fear, anxiety, and determination flowed through his mind, all mixing together with his own nervousness._

_Thirty hellhounds total were present, all of them trying to determine what they needed to do to survive. They all knew that the oldest three hounds weren't going to be of much help as far as physicality went, but they had the experience to coach the others. There was one pregnant hound who wouldn't be anything but a burden, as well as one who was already injured thanks to an attempted sneak attack by a neighboring pack. That attack was what drew Balor's attention to the hounds in the first place._

_When Roman saw the elders move from their place in front of the entrance, he stood taller on his paws, waiting for their commands._

Helena and William, you both need to leave. You cannot fight and you will not survive.

_The orders drifted through the pack, the elder allowing everyone to hear them as he turned his grey colored body towards the pregnant hound, his faded blue eyes showing nothing but concern. Both the injured hound and the mother-to-be protested, but the decision stood. The pack stayed silent as the two hounds walked toward the entrance, both of them glancing back once before running in the same direction, away from the cave._

_Once they had exited, a familiar presence approached Roman._

You three should go as well. While you still can.

_He looked up to see a beautiful midnight black hound looking down to him, her soft chestnut colored eyes showing nothing but concern for her son. Leaning down, she nuzzled her cheek against his, her sleek fur sliding along Roman's softer fuzz as he felt her love flowing through him. Looking behind her, Roman saw both Dean's and Seth's mothers talking to each of them. He was sure that they were telling the other two pups the same thing._

She's right. You pups are our future. You all need to live on.

_Roman moved his gaze beside his mother, watching as his father joined them. Roman could sense his stress, but the dark brown hound kept his composure, remaining calm as he spoke to his son._

We all need to live on.

_Pride filled the larger hound's dark eyes as he listened to Roman's words, and Roman couldn't help but to feel happy that his determination made his father proud._

You're right. We will all live on. But we need to defeat one demon before we can have some peace. And for that, you pups need to go for now.

_Before Roman had time to argue that he needed to stay, it was too late. The decision had been taken from him, as well as Seth and Dean._

_A blood curdling howl was heard from deep in the forest, in the same direction that the two hounds had run in. Helena's fear bolted through every hound in the cave, but they didn't have a lot of time to prepare afterwards. They felt William's death then, the pain ripping through each hound's heart as though a piece were being taken. Shortly after that, the pain intensified, signaling the end of Helena as well. The feeling overwhelmed Roman, not allowing him to feel anything else._

_“It's a shame that the mother put up more of a fight than the injured dog. Not that it mattered. They were both delicious.”_

_Balor's amused voice boomed through the cave as he blocked the entrance, his sinister smile showing blood on his sharp teeth as fire began rising from his body. Roman's mother stood in front of him, his father in front of her. He wasn't sure what their plan was, but he was hoping he would find an opportunity to help._

_That opportunity never came. Balor easily swatted Roman, Dean, and Seth away from him every time they tried to attack, taking down the rest of the pack in a shower of blood and screams._

 

Roman jumped from his sleep, sweat beading on his forehead. He hadn't thought about that day in seven years—since Balor had actually been defeated and locked in his purgatory by the human, Finn. Shaking the images from his head, he wondered to himself about what could have brought them up.

For thousands of years, it had only been Roman, Dean, and Seth. They had always thought about the idea of finding more hellhounds to join up with, but it was never in the cards for them until their unfinished business was taken care of. Once they were free from following orders from stronger demons, they could finally focus on finding more of their own kind. It was while Roman was dead that Seth and Dean had actually heard of more hellhounds existing. 

Roman laid back down in the bed, laying his arm over his face to block out the rising sun shining in through the window.

“While I was dead...” he thought to himself, almost smiling as he slowly shook his head beneath his arm. It wasn't every day that someone beat death; but thanks to the black magician, Aleister, and his daughter, Aislin, Roman had done just that.

Suddenly, he felt one of his new pack-mates transform into their hound state. Focusing on the energy, he knew it was Renee, Dean's wife. If he had to guess, Roman would say she had transformed while trying to intimidate some demons who were causing issues around town.

Since finding the new pack, the hellhounds' only goal had been to keep the peace around them. If there were any demons roaming around trying to cause trouble, the hounds would take care of them one way or another, serving up their own form of justice. Sometimes that meant merely running off a nuisance, but other times it meant killing a threat. In the past few years, it almost seemed as though the hellhounds had become some form of authority figure to the demons in the area. Other demons were always seeking them out to complain about troublesome pests, begging the hounds to help settle disputes. 

“Police,” Roman thought to himself. “We've almost become like the demon police.” That caused an actual smile to crack on his lips.

“Renee put those little gremlins in their place!” Roman heard Dean yell through the house as the front door slammed shut.

Deciding he wasn't going to get back to sleep anymore, Roman sat up and got out of the bed, rubbing the short beard on his chin. Absentmindedly, he thought that he should probably shave soon. He didn't like when his facial hair got too thick.

After sliding on a pair of loose fitting shorts, he left his bedroom, heading to the large kitchen for some breakfast.

“Good morning, big dog,” Edge, one of the other hounds, greeted Roman with a smile from the kitchen table. Roman noted that it didn't look like Edge had been up for long, either, if the states of his long blonde hair and full coffee cup were anything to go by. 

Though his name sounded tough, Edge could be just as big a goofball as Dean. The difference, however, was that Dean was the type to not think his actions through. Edge was more like Seth when it came to planning things out. If there was an opportunity to accomplish a goal, Edge would find it and take it.

Roman waved a hand at Edge as he went straight to the refrigerator. He pulled out a can of Pepsi and began drinking it.

“I don't see why you like that stuff so much,” Christian said as he walked into the kitchen, running his hand through his short blonde hair with a yawn before going to the coffee pot that Edge had turned on.

Christian, Edge, and Renee were blood born siblings. Roman, Dean, and Seth considered each other brothers, but they didn't actually share parents. The other three did, and the relation was noticeable in their appearances. All three had hazel eyes, flecks of green swimming around in the light brown color, along with golden blonde hair. When Christian had let his beard grow in, he looked like he could have been Edge's twin. Of course, he didn't like that, so he kept it clean shaven.

Edge was the oldest of the three of them, then Christian. Renee was the baby sister, so when Dean started showing interest in her, he had to prove himself to the protective older brothers first. Luckily, Edge and Christian realized that Dean was a great guy and gave them their blessings. As blessed as a pack of hellhounds could be, anyway.

“It's all Aislin ever had to drink.” Dean came into the kitchen then from the living room, taking off his leather jacket to drape it over one of the chairs at the table. Renee was following close behind him as she threw her shoulder length hair into a quick ponytail.

“You get used to it,” Seth said in a sleepy voice as he entered the kitchen from the hallway that led to the bedrooms, smiling in Roman's direction as he walked past him to the coffee.

Both Seth and Dean knew how Roman had felt about the healer, Aislin. Before he had died, Roman was supposed to be the one to deliver the healer to a stronger demon, not knowing that the demon had only wanted to use her in an attempt to kill Balor's soul. Roman had become attached to Aislin, getting used to her kind smile and caring nature, along with the fierce determination she held whenever she set her mind to something. Before he could tell her the truth, however, he had died. And by then, it was too late. She had already fallen head over heels for the human who had been housing Balor's soul, Finn. Roman wasn't about to try to rip that happiness from her again. All he could do now was be the best friend that she deserved. And he was happy with at least that much.

Quickly trying to change the subject, Roman decided to ask about the gremlins. “So the little nuisances are gone?”

“Sure are,” Renee answered with a grin as she moved her petite body past Roman to get to the fridge.

“Let me guess,” Edge started after sitting his coffee cup down, “Renee talked to them so much that they decided to run away?”

Renee stepped toward the table then, swatting her hand at Edge, who had begun laughing loudly.

“If you all wake the baby, I'm going to pulverize you.” Beth, Edge's wife, walked through the hall then, giving the other hounds hard stares before her bright blue eyes betrayed her to show a beautiful smile. 

Roman was glad when she smiled because she could be a scary woman when she was mad—especially if it had anything to do with her baby. She was a muscular woman, and she could probably beat every other hellhound in a fight, if given the chance. Add her motherly instincts to protect her daughter into the mix, and the woman could have probably beaten Caoránach all by herself.

All eight hellhounds lived together in a house that had previously been used as a bed and breakfast in Italy. There were ten bedrooms in the house, as well as a huge living room and kitchen. There was more than enough space for their pack, so they had just decided to stay there when Roman, Dean, and Seth joined them.

“I'm on baby duty if she wakes up before your shower,” Edge said, standing up to salute Beth like a soldier at war.

“Just so long as you don't expect me to babysit again,” Dean mumbled as he grabbed an apple from the counter and took a bite.

“No, I think they learned their lesson with that last time, Deano,” Christian told him, patting Dean on the back before walking out of the kitchen.

“Hey, just because I accidentally taught her one bad word doesn't mean I'm a bad babysitter!” Dean argued, following Christian into the living room.

“Dean, you taught her the 'F' word. That's the worst one!” Renee was on Dean's heels then, suddenly talking about how he was going to have to get used to having a baby around if they were ever going to start a family of their own.

Roman smiled before he finished the rest of his Pepsi, placing the empty can into the trash.

“So what are your plans for today?” Seth asked him as he sat down beside Edge at the kitchen table.

“I don't have any yet, but I'm sure something will come up,” Roman answered, suddenly content with how his life was going.

 

_**Fae**_  
I awoke again to the sounds of softly spoken words. The nurse from earlier was in the room, speaking to a man with dark hair and dark eyes. He was wearing a white coat, and my mind automatically thought “doctor.”

The random information that floated through my mind was helpful, but it also made my feelings of frustration grow stronger. I could suddenly know what a doctor or a window was just by seeing one, but I couldn't even remember who _I_ was.

Staying quiet, I listened to their conversation.

“She doesn't seem threatening,” the nurse quietly said to the man, her back turned to me.

“She growled at the paramedics, Kathleen. You yourself said that we needed to get her out of here as soon as possible.” The doctor said in a harsh whisper, giving a name to the nurse. “When you told me she had woken up, I assumed she would be gone soon.”

“I know, David. But that was before I realized that she doesn't even know who she is.” The sympathy in her voice tugged at my heart, but I wasn't even sure why.

“Doesn't that make her more dangerous?” The doctor, David, asked, his voice full of concern. “What if some bigger demon is after her? Maybe that's why she can't remember anything.”

“I don't think that's it. If there were a dangerous demon heading toward us, we would know about it,” she replied, sounding sure of herself. “If we were in danger, we would know.”

David sighed before turning toward the door, walking out without so much as looking at me. Kathleen followed him, still speaking in a hushed tone.

Sitting up, I thought about what they had said. David may be right, I mused. A stronger demon might have been after me before, and that could have been what happened to my memories. Kathleen sounded adamant about him being wrong, but what did she know? 

Obviously more than I did.

The thought made me angry, but it took me back to my previous realization. Just seeing things brought new information to me, so maybe if I could see myself...

I stood up from the bed and looked around the room. I noticed a pile of cloth sitting on a chair and immediately realized they were clothes. Taking the few steps to them, I picked up the plain blue shirt, jeans, and underwear and walked across the room to a small door. As I stepped through the door, I knew that I had entered a small bathroom. There was a sink on one wall and a toilet right beside it. A small shower stall was on the back wall, and I suddenly grew excited about cleaning myself off.

Sitting the clothes on the sink, I noticed the mirror hanging on the wall. I took a deep breath before turning my eyes up to the glass so that I could see my reflection for the first time.

Dark violet eyes stared back at me from the reflection, searching for any sign of who I had been. Long auburn hair hung from my head, falling down to my elbows. The deep red undertones looked dirty to me, making me even more excited about the idea of a shower. If the color of my tan was anything to go by, I had been lying in the sunlight for quite a while. I took note of how undernourished my body looked, realizing that must have been why I felt so weak to begin with.

The woman in the mirror was me, but she looked so unfamiliar. I was almost expecting some memory or vague flash of something to pop into my head, but it never happened. 

Releasing a breath I didn't realize I had held in, I decided to take a shower. Once I was done, I planned on leaving the hospital to find out exactly who I was, one way or another.


	3. Chapter 3

After my shower, I felt much better than I had since waking up in the forest. My body still felt weak, and my stomach was still empty, but just being clean made me feel more refreshed and alert than I remembered ever being.

Of course, that wasn't saying much.

Stepping out of the steam filled bathroom, I realized with a start that the nurse, Kathleen, had returned to my room.

“So you found the clothes?” she asked as she sat a pair of tennis shoes down on the same chair that I found the clothes in.

“I did. Thank you.” I slowly walked toward her, trying not to scare her again. She had been so nice to me, so I didn't want to cause her any trouble.

“These are for you. Would you like some food?” Her question made my stomach growl, but I was already in debt to this human enough. I didn't want to end up as some slave trying to pay off a never-ending debt. I wasn't exactly sure how humans worked as far as repaying a favor went, but I didn't want to get in too deep.

“No, thank you. I should go.” I took the shoes from the chair, careful not to step too close to the woman. After sitting down on the bed, I put the shoes on, knowing exactly what to do with the laces as soon as they were in my hands. Once finished, I stood back up to look over to Kathleen, who was watching me curiously. “Can you just point me in the direction of the forest they found me in please?”

She lifted her hand and pointed to the same direction that the sun was rising from. “Just go east and you'll hit the forest. I'm not sure of where exactly they found you, but it was around one of the hiking trails there.”

“Thank you again,” I told her as I nodded in her direction and walked toward the door of the room, peeking my head out to see several other nurses and doctors walking through the hallways. Panic started rising inside of me at the thought of walking through the sea of white coats without actually knowing where I was going.

Almost as if she could sense my unease, Kathleen asked, “Do you want me to show you to the exit? This hospital isn't small, and we're on the third floor. You'll have to take an elevator.” 

“An elevator?” I asked her as I looked back over my shoulder in her direction. I thought I had been doing good with gaining information, but that word wasn't bringing any images to mind.

“Follow me,” she said with a reassuring smile as she walked past me and into the hallway, patting my back on her way by. I instinctively cringed at the contact, but ignored it since she was helping me. Quickly, I followed her, not wanting to get lost in the shuffle.

Thinking back, I wondered if maybe I only knew about the things that the tree sprite knew about. Surely the sprite knew what a window, sink, shower, and toilet were. But would it know what an elevator was? As I moved my gaze around the hallway, I saw a janitor with a mop. Those words came to my mind naturally. I could see nurses carrying trays of food, as well as people being pushed in chairs that had wheels. 

Once we got to the elevator, I gazed at the steel doors. Suddenly, I knew to press the button that had the arrow pointing down.

It _was_ seeing things that brought the information, I realized as I leaned past Kathleen to hit the button. As soon as I set eyes on the elevator, I knew what it was. I knew its function was to take people between the floors of a building faster than stairs.

Kathleen stared at me, the question in her eyes. “So you know what an elevator is now?”

“Apparently,” I answered her as we waited on the doors to open. “I guess seeing things is all I need to figure out what they are.” Then why didn't it work when I looked at myself in the mirror? The question lingered in the back of my mind.

The doors opened then, allowing a couple to exit the elevator. Once they were out, Kathleen and I walked in. I waited on her to press the button for the ground floor, then watched as the doors slowly closed.

“Do you want me to see if I can get you some help?” Kathleen asked me once we were alone in the small space, turning to look at me.

“What do you mean?” I questioned her, wondering what kind of help she could offer. She was only a human, so I didn't think she could magically bring my memories back.

“I have a friend who may be able to get your memories back if you want me to ask him for help.” Her voice was quiet as she spoke, making me wonder what kind of friend she had.

The thought of being even more indebted to her crossed my mind again. “I think I can make it on my own. I don't want to inconvenience anyone.”

She didn't speak again, only nodding, almost in understanding.

Once the doors opened, she walked me to the large, glass double doors in the front. “This is it.”

“Thank you again for helping me,” I told her as I took one of the steel door handles in my grip, looking out at the grass and trees surrounding the hospital.

“You're welcome,” she replied before adding, “I hope you get everything figured out.”

“Yeah, me, too.” With that, I pulled the door open and stepped out into the warm morning sun.

As soon as I was outside, I started walking in the direction that Kathleen had pointed me in. I could see a road past the hospital grounds, busy sidewalks along each side of the streets. The sounds of cars driving by filled the air, as well as the smells of different foods. Once I made it to the sidewalk, I could see several other buildings on the sides of the roads, their signs all advertising for what was inside each one. I gazed in wonder at all the different sights.

“Watch out!” a man yelled after I accidentally bumped into his shoulder, not paying attention to the people surrounding me. 

As I looked at him, I could tell he was a human. It was odd, though, because it wasn't just his looks that led me to that observation. I could smell it on him. He didn't smell hundreds of years old, like a demon would.

An idea struck me then. 

I started focusing on the people walking around me, hoping to find a demon in the mix who may have been able to help me get to where I needed to be. Or, at the very least, tell me how to go about getting food.

Trying to be discreet, I started sniffing the air around me. I could smell men's cologne, women's perfume, the food from the restaurants around me, as well as the smells of the cars passing by. When I finally caught a sniff of an old scent, I started walking in that direction, dodging the humans walking around me.

Once I got closer to the scent, I started searching for who it could have been. Scanning my eyes across the crowd of people, I finally pinpointed it.

Standing at a street corner, seemingly in his own little world, was what looked like a human. If it hadn't been for the rigid form his body took and the stench radiating from him, I would have never looked twice at the tall man. Even though his appearance was close enough to that of a mortal, I could tell that it was just a disguise.

I walked up to the street corner in hopes of having a conversation with the demon.

“Excuse me,” I said as I approached him, causing his dark grey eyes to look my way, the pupils dilated to almost cover his irises.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice raspy and low. He crossed his bare arms over his chest, covering whatever design was on the front of his sleeveless black shirt.

“I was just wondering if you knew how I could get some food.” I didn't want to ask him to get me any food. Just like with Kathleen, I didn't want to be indebted to anyone. “I don't go around humans much.”

He ran his palm over his bald head as his eyes shifted between me and the opposite side of the street, almost as though he was waiting on someone. “Why do you need help? Just go eat the way you normally do. What are you anyway?”

I couldn't think of anything to tell him as I turned my gaze down to the ground. Did I really want to tell a stranger that I had no idea who I was?

“Now you don't want to talk all of a sudden?” He asked as he took a step closer to me, towering at least a foot over my head. My heart beat picked up at his intimidating stance. “You come and bother me right after a shift, and now you won't even answer my question?”

“I'll just leave you alone,” I told him as I took a step back. I wasn't sure what kind of a shift he was talking about, but it obviously made him irritable.

He growled at me as he watched me back up, but another presence quickly caught his attention.

“Baron, there you are! You know you can't run off this close to a full moon,” a woman whispered to him as she ran across the busy street while the cars were stopped for the traffic light.

Turning around, I decided to walk away then. Baron, I assumed, was distracted by the newcomer, so I just decided to leave him be. It didn't seem like I was going to get any help from him anyway.

Okay, I thought to myself as I started walking down the sidewalk once again. New plan. I would just get to the forest and see what I could find to eat there. Surely there would be some kind of food growing on the trees or something. If worse came to worse, I could always steal food from one of these places. The thought drifted in my mind for a few moments before I caught the scent of another demon close by. I quickly moved my gaze to find where the smell was coming from.

Sitting on a bench in front of what appeared to be a coffee shop was a man. He didn't look near as old as he smelled. His black hair was shaved at the sides, the long middle part pulled into a small pony tail on the back of his head. He was wearing a dark navy suit with a red tie standing out against the white button up shirt under the suit jacket. All the new words coming to me at seeing his appearance surprised me.

Round shaped sunglasses sat on his face, covering his eyes. In one hand, he held a cup of coffee. In the other hand was an umbrella. I looked up to the sky then, noticing that the clouds only looked a little dark, not like it would start raining any time soon.

Deciding to take the chance with him, I walked up to the man and took a seat beside him. I got a nervous feeling as I joined him on the wooden bench, unsure of what exactly I needed to say. Just asking for help getting food hadn't worked out that well with the other demon.

Slowly, he turned his gaze in my direction, and I suddenly felt like I had met him before. Maybe he would recognize me? The hope flared to life inside me, causing me to let a small smile slide onto my lips.

“Who do we have here?” he asked with a smile of his own, his accent not sounding like the others I had heard since awakening. He sounded kind, and it gave me a totally different feeling than Baron had. Though, if he had to ask who I was, he had probably never met me before.

“My name is Fae,” I told him, trying to sound as polite as I could while hoping he'd tell me he remembered me from somewhere. “I was wondering if you could help me.”

The man tilted his head to the side, almost in confusion. “What would you want from me?” he asked before sending another smooth smile in my direction.

Before I could answer, my stomach growled.

“Are you hungry?” He had obviously heard it. “You look lost.”

To answer his question, I decided to go with the most vague truth I could think of. “I'm not exactly lost, but I don't interact with humans often, so I have no idea how to get food from these places.”

I could see his eyebrows scrunch together under his glasses before he stood up and leaned his umbrella against the bench, holding out his hand to me. “I'll help you. Come on.” 

Hesitantly, I took his hand, allowing him to help me up before I quickly let his grip slide from my fingers. He picked up his umbrella then and walked into the coffee shop. I followed close to him, wanting to see exactly what to do in case I needed to know later.

We walked up to the counter on the back wall of the shop, and I watched as he spoke to the person standing at the register. Once he was done speaking, he pulled a wallet from his back pocket and dug out a few pieces of paper. Money. That was how the human world worked, I realized as the cashier gave the man his change, along with a chocolate covered doughnut and a small cup of coffee.

He handed me the doughnut and coffee before grabbing his own cup back off of the counter and motioning for me to follow him to one of the small tables. Sitting down, I watched as he took the seat across from me.

“Thank you,” I told him before taking a bite of the doughnut. The sugar bombarded my mouth with sweetness, but it was balanced by the bitter taste of the coffee. They seemed to go perfectly together. “I don't have any of that money to pay you back with, but I'll find some somehow and give it back to you.”

“You look like a dear friend of mine, so I couldn't help but to assist you,” he admitted, still not taking his sunglasses off even though we were inside. “Don't worry about repayment. This one's on me.” He shot me another warm smile, and I felt the hope once again rise up.

“What's your name?” I asked, getting curious about the stranger, hoping that maybe if I heard his name, I'd remember him from somewhere. “What are you?”

“I'm Marty Scurll, and I'm a familiar to another demon,” he told me in a hushed voice as he leaned closer so that the people around us wouldn't hear. “And what are you?”

His answer made my hopes fall. If he didn't know what I was, then I had obviously never met him before. His name wasn't ringing any bells, either.

Instead of telling him that I had no idea what kind of demon I was, I decided to go a different route. “I... I'm just a tree sprite who's trying to make my way back to the forest,” I smiled at him as I lied. Or maybe I wasn't lying. I really wasn't sure, but that statement didn't feel right to me, so I had to assume it wasn't true.

He watched me as I took another bite of the doughnut, my stomach finally settling down the slightest bit with the food. “Do you need help getting there?”

“No, I know which way I'm going now,” I told him, that part not a lie. I knew I needed to go east until I saw the forest again, so that was what I was going to do.

“In that case, I'll be going. I've got my own matters to attend to,” he said as he stood up and flashed another smile in my direction. “Maybe I'll see you around.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I replied, unsure if I ever actually would see him again. “Thank you.”

“It was my pleasure.” He took his umbrella and coffee in his hands, walking out the door with one backward glance before leaving me alone in the coffee shop.

I turned my attention back to my doughnut once Marty was out of sight, excited about finishing it, but I couldn't help overhearing the few people sitting through the small shop, even though everyone was attempting to speak quietly. That must have been one of the perks of being a demon, I knew.

I heard a man begging a woman to not leave him, his whining voice promising that he hadn't slept with another woman. I wasn't sure why sleeping was so bad, but the angry woman he was sitting with apparently thought it was. I also wondered why he didn't want her to leave him. Maybe he didn't want to be alone in the coffee shop, I thought as I took another bite of my doughnut.

There were two men sitting at one of the other tables, both of them speaking quietly about money. Apparently one of the men owed the other some money, and repayment was needed soon if the first man wanted to continue living. At hearing their conversation, I was glad that I didn't have to worry about repaying Marty or Kathleen for anything. If that was the cost of a favor in the human world, I didn't want to be a part of it.

After listening to a few more boring conversations from the humans around me, I found that I had eaten all of my sugary snack. After gulping down the coffee, I decided it was time to get back on my way to the forest.

 

 _ **Roman**_  
Roman heard a knock on the door, but Edge got to it before he did, rushing so that the loud knocks wouldn't wake the sleeping baby. Smiling to himself at the determination Edge showed to keep the child asleep, Roman walked into the living room to see who could have been knocking so loudly so early in the morning. When he rounded to corner, he saw what appeared to be a young woman frantically speaking in a low voice to Edge, her wide copper eyes shining as she explained her visit.

“I know you lot normally only take care of matters around this area, but we need all the help we can get in Scotland. This makes the fourth village of creatures to be totally taken out within a year. We can't figure out who or what is doing it, and we've nowhere to turn to now. We heard you might be able to help us.”

Edge slowly looked back to Roman, catching his eye in a question as the earlier smile disappeared from his face. Did they want to help her? The woman seemed desperate for their answer, turning her shining eyes to Roman as she waited for a response.

When Roman didn't speak, the woman commanded their attention again, giving more details as she stepped closer to Edge. “We find all of the bodies, but they've not been battered. There's no signs of struggle. They just look weak and frail, like they got sick. But none of them were sick before they were found. Dead.” The woman placed her hands on Edge's shoulders as she spoke, moving her short figure towards him even more.

“Let me talk to the others. Surely we can figure out some way to help you,” Edge told her as he raised his hands in front of him to gently push her back and stop her from coming into the house. “For now, just keep an eye out for any clues as to who could be destroying the villages. We'll come to you once we make a plan.”

“Please hurry. All four of the villages are close to one another, and the one I live in isn't far off from them,” she said before turning her back on Edge and transforming into a large black cat, one white patch of fur in her chest. A cat sìth, Roman realized as he watched her run away from their house with her supernatural speed. A type of weaker-leveled witch.

“What was that about?” Dean asked as he stepped into the living room.

“Apparently there's something killing villages of creatures in Scotland. The cat sìth wanted us to help.” Edge closed the door and turned around to face Roman and Dean. “They don't know who's doing it or how, but they expect us to figure it out and stop it.”

“Well, let's do it then.” Dean's willingness to jump into anything made it hard for Roman to deny the cat sìth the help that she wanted.

“What are we doing?” Seth asked as he entered the room.

“Kicking ass,” Dean told him with enthusiasm as he balled up his fists and threw a few fake punches.

“We don't know if we're kicking ass yet or not, Dean,” Roman reminded him, placing his hand on Dean's shoulder to settle him down. “Scotland's not even in our area. We've never been asked to help that far away.”

“Who's ass are we kicking?” Christian asked, joining the others in the living room.

Edge sighed before saying, “I need everyone to come in here. We need to decide if we're helping or not.”


	4. Chapter 4

_**Fae**_  
After I had finished my doughnut and coffee, I left the shop and started walking toward the forest again. The crowded streets grew less and less populated the farther I went, finally leaving me by myself when the sidewalks disappeared all together. The smells of the restaurants and the sounds of people talking as they walked faded into the distance, being replaced with the smells of trees and the sounds of children playing in backyards. I found myself relieved once I was out of the crowd, not used to being surrounded by so many beings—human or otherwise.

The sun rose higher in the sky, but the heat wasn't overbearing to me. The word “Spring” came to mind, and I knew that must have been the season we were in.

I continued on, staying on the side of the road in the absence of the sidewalks. The passing vehicles didn't worry me much as long as they stayed on the road and gave me space. I was sure that I could survive being hit by a car going as slow as they were, but I still didn't want to end up back at the hospital with Kathleen. Resetting from the beginning was the last thing I needed, I thought to myself as I watched a large truck pass by.

My body still felt weak, even though I had eaten earlier in the day. I needed more than just one doughnut, but I didn't have any of that human money to get anymore food. I definitely didn't want to go around asking people for favors anymore. Who knew what kind of trouble I could get into if I approached the wrong demon? I decided to push past the fatigue and continue walking. I could always find food after I found the tree sprite, I thought to myself as I crossed a street and kept my eyes focused on the trees growing closer.

As I walked, I decided that it would be the perfect time to attempt to do anything with my magic. I knew it was inside of my body, but drawing it out was the problem. I had felt it earlier—in the hospital with Kathleen—but I couldn't do anything with it. I could feel it as I walked, burning just a little brighter in my soul since I had eaten, but I still wasn't sure how to make it move. It just sat in the same place like the flame of a candle, dancing the slightest bit with each of my breaths, but never growing any further. I tried to imagine it turning into a raging fire instead of the small flicker that it was, but I couldn't feel any difference. 

At least it wasn't going out, either, I thought as I released a sigh.

Finally, even the sounds of the suburban families outside in their yards faded away. The houses I passed grew few and far between afterwards. The road went from smooth and paved to a smaller, one lane, gravel trail in an instant. The trees along the sides of the road grew thicker until I had a hard time feeling the sun through the tall branches. Looking around, I saw a sign for a state park and hiking trail. Upon approaching the sign, I felt a strange sensation flow through me.

I jerked my head in every direction, trying to figure out what had caused the feeling. It wasn't painful, but it was uncomfortable—if only because I didn't know what it was. I almost thought it was the feeling of paranoia, like someone could jump out behind one of the many trees surrounding me at any moment, but I didn't see or hear anyone around me. Taking deep breaths, I realized that the sensation had dulled, though not disappeared completely. 

Shaking the feeling off, I continued walking. If something wanted to follow me, I would let it. Maybe whatever it was could help me find the sprite I was looking for, I thought to myself before following the sign for the hiking trail. I remembered that Kathleen had said I had been found near one of the trails in the forest, so following the first one I came to felt like the right decision. I was just hoping that I was at the right trail. Who knew how many there were in the area?

I focused on listening as I walked, trying to find the tree sprite in the thick forest. The only things I could hear, however, were the sounds of a running creek and small birds flying through the leaves. 

Following the trail, I went deeper into the forest. After a few steps, I realized that there was something moving close by. I slowly turned my head, ducking down on instinct so that I would be harder to spot in the bushes and low branches of the tree I stood under. I inched forward until I could see what it was that had caught my attention. Standing about fifty feet from me was a huge deer, its antlers sticking out in all directions a sign that it was a male. My mouth started watering as I watched the animal move carefully through the thick forest, its senses seemingly on high alert.

Had I hunted deer before? Eaten them? Is that why my stomach wanted nothing more than for me to pounce and kill the one standing before me? I wasn't sure. I didn't even know how to kill it. I had no weapons to use, and no claws or fangs that would help me. Or did I?

Focusing on that inner fire one more time, I tried to stoke it, urging it to become a raging inferno so that maybe I could grow claws and eat the deer that was so close to me I could smell it. Still, nothing happened. The small candle-like flame danced minutely, but it still wouldn't grow.

An aggravated growl involuntarily escaped my throat, causing the buck's head to jerk up. He looked in my direction before quickly bounding through the trees, disappearing from my sight.

Not like I could do anything with it anyway, I thought to myself as I heard my stomach growl once again, a cramping feeling starting to form in the pit from lack of food.

With a sigh, I started up the incline, staying on the dirt trail that had been cleared out by other hikers. I looked around as I stepped over tree roots and around rocks, realizing with frustration that I was still alone, save the few small birds that flew overhead, out of reach of my non-existent claws.

Why hadn't the sprite come to find me after giving me the information that she had? She was obviously trying to help me, so why not come to explain herself? Unless it was too dangerous for her, I realized, remembering the doctor's theory. Some stronger demon may have been looking for me. It may have already gotten to the tiny sprite.

Again, I felt the uncomfortable sensation run through me, but it was almost as if it were different than the first time. It felt like it had been amplified, adding to the first round. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what the feeling was, but I once again chalked it up to paranoia.

Picking up my pace, I tried to recall anything about the place I had been in when I woke up. I didn't remember hearing running water, so the gurgling creek that I was hearing through the trees discouraged me. Of course, I wasn't paying much attention to anything when I first woke up except who the two humans were who had woken me. My head had been pounding then, so maybe there had been a creek close by, and I just didn't hear it.

Ignoring the sounds, I thought about what the place looked like. I remembered the dirt trail that the hikers had been on. The EMT's had to park on a road and walk a short distance to where I had been with the two men because the ambulance wouldn't make it up the trail. So I hadn't been that far up the mountain, I realized as I stopped and once again looked around.

I was in the wrong spot. On the wrong trail.

I heaved a short grumble as I turned around to go back to the small road I had wandered away from to get to the trail. I wasn't sure where to go from there to find the other trails, but I was sure if I just kept walking, I would eventually find something.

Setting my determination, I continued my journey through the woods.

 

_**Roman**_  
The decision to help the others in Scotland wasn't a hard one to make for the hellhounds, especially after Dean had set his mind to it. Roman had felt apprehensive about it at first, unsure about taking on a demon who could kill villages of supernatural beings without leaving a trace, but Dean's enthusiasm was contagious, and the other hounds quickly shared his confidence that they could stop whatever was killing the villages. The only one they had to worry about convincing was Beth; not because she was worried about them getting hurt, but because she didn't want any demon tracking them back to the house where her and Edge's one year old daughter was. Roman couldn't blame her for that. He had also thought about that possibility at first.

“Our job as hellhounds is to protect Hell. In this day, that means helping the demons of Hell who are just trying to live their lives,” Edge said to his mate, trying to get her to understand why they all felt the need to go. “If the humans realize that whole villages and towns and cities are suddenly dying, they're going to want to investigate themselves. If humans get involved in the matters of demons, who knows what could happen?”

“I understand that,” Beth replied, keeping her tone calm, “but what happens when whatever it is killing all of those villages sees us there? They're going to want us dead, too. What about Chloe?”

Roman followed Seth and Dean into the kitchen then while Edge, Christian, and Renee stayed in the living room with Beth, trying to convince her that no one would follow them back to the house and that they'd destroy whatever or whoever it was killing the creatures.

“Things like this were easier when it was just us,” Seth said in a joking tone as he leaned against the counter with a sly grin.

“Yeah, but would you rather it be just us again?” Roman asked him, fixing a pointed stare in Seth's direction.

“Of course not,” Seth replied, raising his hands up, not wanting Roman to get the wrong idea.

“If it isn't obvious, I don't want that either,” Dean said with a grin as he stole a quick glance at Renee through the doorway to the living room.

“I just wonder what could be happening to the demons in those villages.” Seth crossed his arms over his chest and looked between Dean and Roman.

Roman had never heard of demons dying from starvation or sickness, so the cat sìth's description of the bodies made no sense to him. He felt like if he could see them himself, he could get a better idea of what was going on.

“Maybe their magic is being stolen. Or their souls.” Suddenly, Dean's eyes lit up as an idea hit him. Roman and Seth both watched him, waiting on Dean to explain what was going through his mind. In a quiet voice so as not to worry the others, Dean said, “What if it's another shinigami or grim reaper? Stealing demons' souls is something they're good at.”

The three of them had been working under a grim reaper before Roman had died years ago. Right after Roman's death, Seth and Dean had gained the help of friends to defeat that reaper, along with his shinigami sidekick. They knew how those types of demons worked, and Roman knew that Dean's idea didn't sound entirely unbelievable.

Roman shook his head at his brother, however, quickly dispelling one of those theories. “The Undertaker was the only grim reaper alive.”

“That we know of,” Seth interrupted, his eyebrows going up like maybe Dean's theory wasn't crazy.

“Exactly,” Dean agreed, throwing his hands around as he went on. “And even if there aren't any grim reapers left, that doesn't mean it isn't a shinigami. What if Shinsuke had family? Or even just friends? Maybe this is all a trap set up by them to get us to go to Scotland.”

“Okay, chill out there,” Seth said, trying to stop the smile from crossing his lips as he placed a hand on Dean's shoulder.

“First off,” Roman started, raising one finger in Dean's direction, “Shinsuke had no friends. Except Finn. And you see how he treated him. No one is going to want revenge for him dying.” Roman raised another finger. “Second, if it were a shinigami, how would he get to a whole village of demons without them realizing what was going on and attacking him? Much less four villages.”

“Roman's got a point, Dean,” Seth said as he removed his hand from Dean's shoulder. “We just need to get there and see exactly what's going on.”

Suddenly, what looked like a small puppy ran through the kitchen under Roman's feet and into the living room, the golden fur a blur as she jumped onto the couch beside Beth.

Roman smiled as he watched the pup transform, the fluffy ball of fur changing into a little child who looked like she was at least five in human years, even though she was only just a little over one year old. His smile quickly disappeared, however, when he thought about his own childhood that was stolen from him. That dream had brought back Roman's memories from the day that his family had died, and he just couldn't seem to shake them off. Roman had made a promise to himself after that day to not let anything kill off his entire pack again, and that included whatever they were about to be up against in Scotland.

Roman, Dean, and Seth walked back into the living room once they realized it didn't look like the others were discussing their trip anymore, hoping that Beth had agreed to let them go through with the journey to Scotland.

“I'll be going away for a little while with everyone, Chloe,” Edge told the child as he knelt down in front of the couch, putting his hand on her long blonde hair. Roman breathed a small sigh of relief when he heard Edge's words, realizing that they meant Beth had conceded to the idea.

“Who's going to stay with me then?” Chloe asked in a squeaky voice, almost pouting.

Beth put her arm around Chloe and pulled her close while smiling down at her. “I'll be here with you. We can have a girl's night.”

The little girl accepted that answer with excitement, so she rushed through her goodbyes to the other hounds, already making plans for her and Beth before Roman had even made it out the door. After they had all walked outside of the house, they started discussing exactly what they needed to do.

“So the main thing,” Seth started as they paused in the large backyard surrounded by trees, “we need to stay together. If someone's taking out full villages, it's probably because they're attacking them one at a time.”

“Right,” Edge agreed, looking over to Christian. “The cat sìth said that the villages weren't that far away from each other, so it sounds like whatever is attacking them is probably in that surrounding area.”

“That'll be a lot of ground to cover if we're staying together, though,” Dean said, obviously already impatient with the impending search. “We can find more things faster if we split up.”

“Maybe we can split up into two groups,” Christian suggested. “There are six of us.”

“How many demons were in the villages, though?” Renee asked him, trying to get them to stay with Seth's plan.

“But they didn't know there was a threat,” Dean countered.

“We aren't sure that they didn't know,” Roman told him, deciding that staying together was their best bet until they knew what they were up against.

Dean acted like he was going to say something else, but stopped when he realized Roman had a point.

“Let's just go talk to the lady and figure out if she knows anything else,” Edge said as he ran a hand through his long hair. “We can figure out a more concrete plan once we have a little more information.”

“It's probably best if we don't transform, though,” Renee said, her face thoughtful.

“If anything's there, it probably won't already know what we are.” Seth realized where Renee was going with her thought. “We won't be automatic targets if we don't show up ready for a fight.”

“Okay, then we'll stay together and not transform,” Edge said before moving his eyes around the group. “Everyone ready?”

Roman nodded, trying to remember what the cat sìth's energy felt like to transport. Once they all knew where they were going, the six of them disappeared, making the trip to Scotland together.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Roman**_  
Once the hounds materialized in Scotland, Roman looked around to see where they had found the cat sìth. They were all six standing in a crowded cottage, the stone walls very frail looking. Roman found that his head was almost grazing the ceiling of the small cottage.

There was only one room in the whole house, along with one window and one door leading outside. In the floor at a small wooden table about the size of a coffee table sat the woman who had come to ask for their help, her stringy brown hair falling around her face and down to her shoulder blades. She seemed to be mumbling to herself as she reorganized three small, grey, stone figures on the table. They almost looked like some form of human and canine hybrids, each of them different in height and appearance.

When the woman realized that the hounds had appeared, her copper colored eyes grew wide with excitement. She stopped fidgeting with the figurines and quickly jumped from her position on the floor to greet them, looking up to each hound almost in awe. Roman kept his eyes fixed on her figures for a second longer until she started speaking, wondering why the cat sìth was so particular about how they were positioned.

“You've decided to come and help, have you?” she said, her Scottish accent thick as she moved from one hound to the other almost bouncing as she looked up to them. “There are still bodies here. You can see for yourself. I'll show you. Come, come.”

Without waiting on them, the cat sìth walked out the door, leaving them alone in the cottage.

Roman moved his eyes from one hound to the other, taking in their bewildered expressions until his gaze landed back on the short door that he knew he'd have duck to get through. The woman popped her head back in then, waving her arm at the hounds.

“Come on then,” she said, her pace not slowing down any as she stepped back outside.

Dean shrugged his shoulders and headed for the door, the others following after him.

When they stepped outside, Roman felt a slight chill in the air. He thought that if he remembered right, Scotland never got too hot, even in the springtime. The village they were in had at least twelve little cottages all in close proximity, like a small community. There were little dirt paths lined in flowers in the green grass between each cottage, connecting them all. Roman thought that it seemed entirely too peaceful for something to want to destroy whoever used to live there.

“Come, come. Look in this house.” The cat sìth motioned for them to follow her, but then she stopped at the door to one of the houses. She paused just long enough to look back again, her gaze landing on Edge. “You. You...” She trailed off as she pointed to Edge and closed her eyes like she was trying to remember something.

“Edge,” he told her, guessing that she wanted his name.

“Okay, Edge,” she said as she opened her eyes to look back to him. “You said you'd come here when you made a plan. What's the plan?” She abandoned her position in front of the door to step closer to Edge again. Roman could see the uncomfortable look on Edge's face as he stepped back away from the woman.

“We need to see the bodies first,” Seth explained, catching her attention.

The woman almost scampered toward Seth then, her eccentric nature causing him to take a surprised step back before she got to him. “What's your name?” she asked as she pointed a finger toward him.

“Seth,” he told her before pointing to each hound to name them. “And that's Dean, Renee, Christian, and Roman.”

“My name's Nikki Cross. Now you have to see this body.” Nikki almost jumped back from Seth then and returned to the door to swing it open.

Roman took a deep breath as he followed Nikki into the house, unsure of what he was about to walk into as he leaned down to get through the door. When he entered the clean cottage, he noticed a short bed in the corner. In the bed was the body of a faerie, the creature appearing entirely too thin and frail. From what Roman knew about the faeries that lived around the area, they were normally nice creatures who caused no harm to humans or demons. Why would someone want to attack them, he wondered as he took a step closer to the bed to get a better look.

Judging by what he could see of the faerie, Roman noted that she appeared to have withered away. Her long grey hair fell around the small pillow, showing her pointed ears. She couldn't have been more than four feet tall, but Roman knew that part was normal for the faeries there. Her ashen skin almost looked like it was trying to fall off of her bones in its shriveled state. Nikki had been correct when she had said that it didn't look like there had been any signs of a struggle. There were no cuts or scratches on the faerie's body that Roman could see, no rips or tears in her long white dress, and no mess in the house to show that the faerie had tried to get away from something hurting her. 

“It just looks like she died of old age,” Dean said as he leaned in behind Roman, also trying to get a better view of the body.

“They can't have all died of old age at the same time,” Renee told him, going to the foot of the bed to see.

“Maybe this _is_ some kind of sickness,” Christian said, looking from the body to Nikki. “Do they all look like this?”

“They do, they do. Just lying in their beds, looking sound asleep.” Nikki's reply came fast as she moved behind Edge to peek over his shoulder at the faerie, a look of wonder on her face. “You can see. They're all in their beds.”

Roman turned to the open window, casting his senses out to listen for anything outside. He didn't hear anything but the slight wind; nothing could be heard lurking around, ready to attack.

Reconsidering the first thing they had decided on, Roman said, “Maybe we _should_ split into groups to check it out.” Before anyone could argue, he went on. “There are no living creatures here except for us.”

Watching the others as they all listened around them, Roman knew they would hear the same things he did. Not even any wildlife could be heard in the surrounding area.

“Maybe that'll be okay for now.” Seth was the first one to agree, much to Roman's surprise. He assumed Dean would be the first to jump on board with his idea.

“I said from the beginning that we could find anything faster if we split up,” Dean said as he took a step back from the bed.

“We can go in groups of two,” Roman suggested, also moving back from the faerie. “I'll go with Seth, Dean can go with Renee, and Edge and Christian can go.”

Seth started separating the areas then. “Roman and I can look around the houses closest to the edge of the village. Dean, you and Renee can look through the ones in the middle. Edge and Christian can look around the surrounding area of the village, but don't go too far out.”

Edge nodded in agreement before adding, “If you find anything, transform. Don't stay that way for long, though. Just long enough for the others to feel it and come to you.”

“What should I do?” Nikki asked as she sent a wild smile in Christian's direction, her eyes looking him up and down. “I can help.”

“You can be our lookout,” Christian told her with enthusiasm, obviously just trying to get her to leave them alone for the time being. “If you hear anything, come find us.”

“I can do that!” Nikki said as she clapped her hands once and walked towards the door of the cottage.

The hounds followed her, separating with their designated partners to scour the village.

Roman and Seth walked towards the houses surrounding the outer perimeter of the village, moving slowly so that they could keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

“I don't know about you, but that cat is giving me weird vibes.” Seth's words were quiet as he moved closer to Roman while they walked toward one of the cottages, intending on only him to hear them. 

“I'm glad I'm not the only one,” Roman admitted, as he opened the wooden door to the stone house. “She seems a little out there.”

“I can understand her being nervous about everything—and maybe that's why she's acting so odd—but if that were the case, why would she come back here alone to wait on us? Wouldn't she rather wait on us somewhere safe, then bring us here when we found her?”

Roman stopped once he entered the house, looking to the single bed in the corner. He found another body there, the faerie in the bed looking identical to the first one as far as it's sickly appearance went. “I don't know, but this whole situation is just... different,” he said, unsure of what other word he could use to describe it.

“I've never heard of an epidemic overcoming full villages of different species,” Seth said as he moved to the other end of the house, looking over the short table there. Roman followed his gaze to find nothing but plants and nuts scattered out on the table, like the faerie had been in the middle of preparing something before she was bed-ridden, and she didn't get the chance to clean up. Two short chairs were pushed up to the table, making Roman realize why Nikki had opted for sitting in the floor of the first cottage. There was no way a person his size could sit in one of those without breaking it, he thought.

“If this is an epidemic, then we don't need to go back to the house before we find out what it is,” Roman realized with a sigh. If whatever was killing the faeries was a contagious disease, they didn't need to risk getting Beth or Chloe sick. 

“Right,” Seth agreed as he walked over to what looked like a miniature stone oven. There was wood inside, but it didn't appear to have been burned. “We'll figure out where we're staying once we all regroup.”

Suddenly, Roman felt all four other hounds transform almost simultaneously. Seth looked in his direction, his eyebrows going up in surprise.

“We'll go to Edge and Christian first since they're outside and can be spotted easier,” Seth said, waiting on a nod from Roman.

Focusing on their connection, Roman and Seth both transported directly to Edge. He and Christian remained hounds for a split second longer before regaining their human bodies. Once they were humans again, Roman also felt Dean and Renee revert back to their human forms.

“I told Dean and Renee you were here first, and that we'd all come to them in a minute,” Edge said as he held his focus on the ground at his feet.

“What did you find?” Roman asked him, trying to see what Edge was obviously seeing in the grass.

“It's blood.” Christian knelt down to point to a few drops of blood on the ground, looking up to Roman and Seth to make sure that they could see it.

Crouching down beside him, Roman looked at the blood. It didn't look or smell fresh, but he couldn't tell how long it had been there exactly. 

“What's it from? It doesn't smell human,” Seth pointed out as he got down beside Roman on his knees.

“I can't tell, but this is the first hint of any foul play,” Edge told them with a sigh as he rubbed his hand against his bearded chin and looked around to the houses in the village.

Seth stood up then and looked in the direction that Dean was in. “Let's go see what Dean and Renee have found now. Maybe it's more blood.”

“No, they found something that's more odd than anything,” Edge said, making Roman give him a curious stare. “You'll just have to see.”

Roman smelled the blood one more time, trying to commit it to memory in case he came into contact with the creature that it came from. With that, they all transported to the cottage that Dean and Renee were searching through. The house was crowded as all six hounds stood in the middle of the room, barely any space for them to move. Roman looked over to see another dead faerie in the bed, just like the first two.

“Finally,” Dean said as he turned toward the other four hounds. “Look at this.” He gave Roman and Seth a meaningful glance as he held out a single black feather. It looked as long as Dean's forearm, like it had come from a very large bird.

The first thought that went through Roman's mind was the image of a large black crow. Was that feather the same size as Aleister's, he asked himself as he examined it in Dean's hand. It looked about the right length. But why would the black magician who had helped them so much be taking out villages of harmless faeries? Roman couldn't wrap his head around it.

“Does it look familiar to you guys, too?” Dean's voice broke the silence as he moved the feather closer to Roman and Seth.

“It does,” Seth agreed as he took the feather from Dean's grip.

“Why does it look familiar?” Christian asked, staring at the feather between Seth's fingers.

“Remember how I told you about the magician, Aleister Black? And about how he helped us defeat Balor and brought Roman back to life?” Dean asked Edge, Christian, and Renee as he moved his gaze between them.

When they nodded, Roman finished explaining in a quiet voice. “He shifted into a crow.”

Realization dawned on their faces as they all turned their gazes to the lone feather.

“But that doesn't make sense,” Seth said as he handed the feather to Roman. He took it to examine it more closely, trying to tell if it did in fact come from Aleister.

“No, it doesn't make sense,” Roman answered after smelling the feather. “But this doesn't belong to Aleister.”

Dean looked back to Roman as his eyebrows scrunched together, obviously wondering exactly how he knew that.

“Smell it,” Roman said as he held the feather up in front of him.

Seth and Dean both complied and leaned closer to the feather, sniffing it slowly before turning confused gazes to Roman.

“It doesn't have a scent at all.” Seth leaned back again as he moved his eyes to Dean. “Aleister has a scent.”

“That doesn't mean that this isn't a good clue for what happened,” Renee interjected as she stepped behind Dean to put a hand on his shoulder. “Just because it isn't what you thought at first, doesn't mean it won't help us.”

“She's right,” Seth told him as he laid the feather on the short table. “If it were a normal bird feather, it would smell like it. This is obviously something different. That's still a sign of something else coming to this village.”

Suddenly, the door to the cottage started to open. All six hounds transformed then, guards up and ready for battle. They were almost standing on top of each other in their hound bodies, shoulder to shoulder with one another. Roman wasn't sure if it was another faerie coming in, or whoever the feather belonged to, but he wasn't going to get caught from behind by a sneak attack. Knowing that something that could eradicate a whole village was around the area wasn't something Roman wanted to take lightly. He wasn't risking his family's safety.

Once the door fully opened, a large black cat came in, standing almost as tall as the canines. The cat began slinking past the hounds, weaving around them to the table where the feather was laying. Roman instantly recognized her as Nikki, and he let his guards down, if only a little. He had totally forgotten about the cat sìth being outside, keeping an eye out for other intruders.

_What is she doing?_ He heard Dean's voice echo through his mind as they all kept their eyes on the cat.

_I don't know._ Roman watched as she stared at the feather for a moment, a small purring noise escaping her throat.

“Do you know what that is?” Edge asked Nikki after he had transformed back into a man, his hazel eyes remaining on her.

Her copper colored irises shone bright as she looked up to him, the cat's mouth moving into what looked like a smile. Without warning, she instantly turned back into the small woman they had met there.

“I don't know, but it's pretty.” 

Roman wasn't the only one who noticed the odd tone in her voice as she stared back to the feather longingly.

_Are we sure she doesn't know?_ Dean asked the hounds, still not taking back his human body.

_We may need to find out more about her if we want to get to the bottom of this._ Roman wasn't sure why, but he thought for sure that Nikki knew more than she was letting on.

“There weren't any trespassers,” Nikki told them all as she looked to each hound, her gaze finally leaving the feather again.

Roman, Seth, Dean, Renee, and Christian returned to their human bodies then.

“Good,” Christian said with a forced smile in Nikki's direction. “Thank you for keeping watch.”

“Do you know what happened now?” she asked as she stepped closer to Christian, turning her head to the side as she looked up to him and smiled.

“No, we only found a couple of things.” He took as big of a step back as he could from her, keeping the fake smile glued to his face. “But we'll keep looking.”

“First, we need to do something with the bodies. We can't just leave them here,” Roman said, feeling uneasy about all of the dead faeries lying around the village.

“We could burn them,” Dean suggested with a small shrug, knowing that their flames together could incinerate bones and all. Roman knew that would be the easiest option.

“Oh, fire,” Nikki mused as she moved closer to Dean, turning the eerie smile in his direction. “I like the way you think.”

“I don't think we need to draw attention to this place,” Seth told him as he looked over to the body in the bed. “Whoever did this thinks this village is dead. If they're still around, they'll see the smoke and know someone's here.”

“We'll have to bury them,” Renee said, giving Nikki a hard glare. When Nikki noticed, she took two long steps back away from Dean, moving her smile to Renee as her back hit the wall.

“You are all strong. You can dig holes.” Nikki didn't offer to help, but instead left the cottage then, turning into her feline before running out of the door.

Roman rolled his eyes in her direction as he released a long sigh.

“I know cats and dogs don't normally get along, but there's something about her that I don't like.” Renee was staring at the door Nikki had just left through, her eyes squinted as she spoke.

“We need to keep an eye on her,” Roman said before turning to the bed once again. “But for now, let's lay them to rest.”

Dean groaned once as he looked up to the ceiling. “It's times like these that I wish Finn still had Balor's powers.”

Everyone gave Dean harsh stares.

“What?” Dean asked as he shrugged his shoulders. “It would be easier than digging all these holes. Our paws are going to hurt.”

Roman only shook his head at Dean before moving to pick up the body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hell in a Cell tonight means an update!   
> I am almost to a point where I will start posting two chapters a week because I just wrote four of them in the span of three days and already have 27 total written now. xD I actually didn't plan on this being near as long as Waking The Demon, but it's shaping up to be a ride. lol.  
> I hope you enjoyed it and will enjoy the rest of it!


	6. Chapter 6

_**Roman**_  
After all of the faeries had been buried in the forest that surrounded the village, their bodies able to become one with the earth once again, the hounds regrouped in front of the first cottage they had appeared at. They were all covered in dirt thanks to their digging, and Roman started wondering if there was some kind of lake or river near by that they could get clean in. He also knew that they needed to figure out where they were going to be staying for the night, especially since the sun was starting to set across the horizon, the temperature dropping a few degrees.

“I guess we can go home and get some rest, then come back tomorrow to look some more,” Christian said as he ran a hand through his short hair, his hazel eyes looking tired.

“No, we can't do that,” Edge said, echoing Roman's earlier thoughts. “If this is some kind of sickness, we can't risk bringing it home.”

“We don't need to risk bringing it anywhere,” Seth agreed, shaking some of the dirt from his long hair.

“Are we staying here tonight, then?” Dean asked as he looked around the quiet village. 

Christian's voice grew worried. “What if whatever killed the faeries decides to come back?”

Roman was the first to respond with what he was sure they were all thinking. “We can take turns sleeping. One of us can stay awake and keep an eye out for a while, then switch out every few hours.”

Dean let out a groan as he lifted his head to the darkening sky, twilight settling in. “I hate not knowing what we're up against.”

“I know, but until we find out if it is a disease or another demon, we can't take any risks,” Seth told him as he folded his arms across his chest.

“Who's going to take first watch?” Renee moved her eyes across the group.

“I can,” Roman offered, casting his gaze toward the trees. In reality, he just didn't want to go to sleep anytime soon. The nightmare from his past still hadn't escaped his mind, and he couldn't bring himself to go back to sleep, inviting the images in once again. “But before we get settled for the night, let's take one more trip around to make sure we're the only ones here.”

“If you guys want to check the houses one last time, we can check the perimeter,” Seth said as he placed his hands on Roman and Dean's shoulders. Roman nodded in Seth's direction, silently saying he agreed with that plan.

“I'll go with you three,” Renee told Seth as she took a step closer to Dean. “It'll make more sense to have more of us go out there since there's a better chance of something sneaking up on us.”

“Are you sure?” Dean asked her, staring into her eyes with concern, a new protective streak of his own showing. He had never been one to question what someone else wanted to do until he was married to Renee. When she was involved, Dean's focus shifted from attack mode to defense mode.

She gave him her best confident smirk as she answered. “If you can jump into danger, so can I.”

Roman watched their silent battle of wills, knowing that Dean would give in and let Renee join them. Arguing with anything that the female hellhounds set their minds to was a futile attempt, and they all knew it. 

Finally, Dean raised his hands to his sides and heaved a fake exasperated sigh before grinning. “I don't know why I even try.”

“Okay, so you guys check the houses,” Roman told Edge and Christian before looking back to Seth. “We can go in our hounds. We'll be quieter that way, and we can speak without being heard.”

“If you guys find anything, transform,” Seth said before the four of them walked away from Edge and Christian, headed toward the surrounding area of the village.

Focusing on his inner hound, Roman pulled the beast forward, transforming his body from the human to the canine in a quick burst of light. His senses cleared up, his vision becoming even better in the fading light. He stretched his paws on the cool earth, feeling for any sign of something moving around them as they walked.

_I wonder where the cat went to get out of digging graves._ Renee pointed out the fact that they hadn't seen Nikki since they started burying the faeries.

Roman moved his eyes through the dark trees, the sun fully set in the sky then. _I don't know, but we need to find her first thing tomorrow._

_She may be infected with whatever is killing the others._ Seth's realization hadn't crossed Roman's mind at all. _Who's to say they didn't all go crazy before they were bedridden?_

Roman followed Seth's train of thought then as he let Renee take the lead. _If we could find anyone who saw them right before they died, we could find out exactly what the symptoms are._

Renee came up with the next step in the plan. _Maybe we could go to neighboring villages tomorrow and check on them. If it's spreading, they might be infected, too._

Dean spoke up then from his place in the back of the group, looking out for any sneak attacks from behind. _Or we find whoever that feather belongs to, and find who left the blood, and figure out why they killed the villages. Then kill them._

Roman knew they couldn't rule out other demons being the killers, just like Dean was reminding them. He almost wished it _were_ other demons. If that were the case, they could kill the trouble makers and be done with it. If it were a sickness, they'd have to find a cure before they could go back home.

Suddenly, Roman felt fear and confusion coming through the pack's connection, along with a fierce anger. Which hound was so upset? He couldn't tell.

He stopped in his tracks and looked behind him from Dean to Seth. He knew it wasn't them. He could tell exactly which of his original pack was pushing emotions through the bond. After being together for so long, their spirits became just as well known to him as his own.

_Who is that? What's wrong?_ Dean's voice sounded in their minds as he obviously felt the same thing that Roman had.

_Nothing's wrong. What are you talking about?_ Renee answered him, turning back to look at the three males from her place in front of them.

_We need to go help him._ Seth looked back to Dean, who was watching Renee with his own confusion.

_You don't sense that one of them is in trouble?_ He asked his mate.

She slowly shook her head, her golden body starting to go ridged. _No. They've not even transformed yet._

Feeling it out on his own, Roman realized that Renee was right. Neither of the others had transformed into their hounds.

But who was so connected to them that Roman, Seth, and Dean could feel their emotions?

_We need to go help him, whoever it is._ Roman echoed Seth's earlier words as he locked on to the feeling of the emotions, ready to teleport straight to the source.

_Go to Edge and Christian. Stay in a house. If we need backup, we'll let you know._ Dean spoke the words to Renee before he, Roman, and Seth disappeared, leaving Renee to explain to her brothers what had happened.

 

**_Fae_**  
After walking for another hour or so, my stomach had started grumbling so loudly that I was surprised it wasn't scaring away the tiny creatures of the forest. My body was growing weaker with fatigue, but I couldn't stop my search. I looked around me, but the trees all looked the same. The only difference with this trail and the last three I had found was that I couldn't hear the small creek running anymore.

That was a good sign, I thought to myself with some form of encouragement. At least I knew I was getting closer to the spot where I had been found. Either that, or I had just gone the wrong way to get away from the running water.

I left the gravel road and started up the newest dirt trail, surprised that I hadn't seen any humans hiking through the woods on my journey. Not that I wanted to see any.

Suddenly, I heard a rustling noise coming from behind a large, fallen tree trunk to my left. I turned my head in that direction and watched, waiting to see another deer come from behind it. I had seen one already, but wasn't sure how common they were in the area. Maybe this time I could actually catch it and figure out how to eat it, I thought to myself as I watched the tree trunk, waiting to make a run for the deer when it showed itself.

When a small elf popped its head up from behind the trunk, I almost jumped for joy. Her long black hair was pushed behind her pointed ears, her glowing green eyes staring straight at me with curiosity. It was a creature that I could actually talk to. She may have known something about the sprite.

“Excuse me,” I said, trying to keep my voice light as I let a friendly smile settle onto my lips. “Do you know where I can find a tree sprite who lives around here?”

The elf kept a watchful eye on me as she climbed out from behind the trunk, sitting on the top of it. In her hands, she held a basket full of wild blackberries.

“You've been out here for a while,” she whispered, her high-pitched voice almost sounding worried. “Here, have some food.” She held the basket out to me and watched as I slowly moved toward her, careful not to scare her away.

“I have,” I told her as I reached a hand toward the basket, taking a berry between my finger and thumb. “I'm looking for a sprite who helped me earlier. I wanted to see if she knew who I was.”

“You don't know?” the elf asked as she watched me eat the blackberry, the small thing not doing much to ease the cramping in my stomach. The bitterness of the berry wasn't a problem for me. I could have been offered dirt to eat and I would have happily accepted with as hungry as I was. I just wanted more.

“I don't know,” I admitted as I sat down on the log beside of her and looked out through the trees. “I woke up in this forest somewhere with no memories.”

“I don't know if you're in the right place,” the elf said, her voice growing even softer as she held the basket up to me once again.

I looked down to her, and took another berry, eating it quickly before speaking. “What makes you say that?”

An apologetic gaze crossed her features then as she kept the basket held up, waiting for me to take more. Once I did, she spoke again. “There aren't any sprites living here.”

I felt a groan bubble up from my stomach, but I suppressed it. The elf was feeding me, so I didn't want to start growling at her like I had the EMT's.

“Do you know of any place where they do live?” I asked her, trying to get as much information as I could before she decided to leave.

“There used to be a family of sprites here, but they moved to a different area many years ago. I don't know where they are now,” she said before we heard another voice call out to her.

“Lilly, come. It's time to harvest the nuts from the trees.” I heard a louder voice say as I watched the elf, Lilly, turn in its direction. I looked behind us to see another elf standing under a tree, waiting for the first one.

“That's my mother. I need to go,” Lilly said as she sat the basket on the tree trunk beside me and stood up, looking down to the ground. “I'm sorry I couldn't help.”

“You did help,” I told her with another smile. “You fed me.”

She looked up to me and smiled, her eyes sparkling before she turned to run to her mother. I watched as they walked away from me, toward a tree full of walnuts.

She has a mother, I thought to myself as I ate the rest of the berries and stood up to continue my search, leaving Lilly's basket for her to find.

A family. I wondered what that must have been like. Had I had one of those? I may have had a mother somewhere searching for me, worried about where I had wandered off to. With that thought, I felt the same unfamiliar sensation run through my body once again. I couldn't figure out what that feeling was, but there was no one else around me except for the two elves. I felt for the little bit of magic I had, thinking that maybe the feeling was connected to it in some way, but it hadn't changed at all since I had woken up.

Growing more frustrated with the whole situation, I felt the need to burn off my anger. Even though I was still hungry and tired, I started running through the forest, stepping over broken limbs and large rocks on my way.

My mind took off as I pushed my body harder, unsure of what direction I needed to go in anymore.

I must have been broken, I thought as my speed picked up. I couldn't remember anything, I couldn't get my magic to work, and I couldn't even find the place I had been in before. I couldn't find the damn tree sprite to ask her about anything. I couldn't find my family. I couldn't find my sister.

_My... what?_

Suddenly my body felt light. A sharp pain erupted from every nerve ending as I came to an abrupt stop, my muscles tightening on their own. I could feel my magic moving, but I wasn't sure what it was doing. I tried to focus on it—tried to make it stop moving and calm back down to the soft candle light—but it fought against me, a wildfire moving through my body with a fierce burn. I had never experienced anything like the feeling before, I was sure of that. What I wasn't sure of was why it was hurting me so much. It shouldn't be hurting. I knew that instinctively.

I tried to let out a scream, but it didn't work. I could only close my eyes and hope that the pain ended soon as I dropped to my hands and knees in the thick grass of the forest. Fear ran through me as my body went numb.

At least it was better than the pain.

Just as soon as the thought passed through my mind, the pain returned. This time, however, it wasn't as intense. It was almost like a dull ache, but there was more to it. I felt like I had creatures crawling inside of my skin, moving on their own as they reorganized my bones and insides. I fought every instinct that flew into my mind then. I tried to keep my body the way it was, tried not to let my hands and arms move, tried to get back to a standing position. 

My mind was yelling at me, screaming, “Don't fight it, and it won't hurt!” 

I couldn't help it. This was something I was sure I'd never felt before, so I didn't know how _not_ to fight it.

Once that feeling subsided, I felt more drained of energy than I had ever felt. Confused and completely exhausted, I let my body fall to my side on the ground. It was then that I realized I had changed forms.

Fear swam through me as I looked down to my body to see fur. It was the same color as my auburn hair, long and thick all the way to my paws. 

My paws. 

I realized I had paws—four of them—along with a long tail. I was a dog?

Suddenly, my vision went white as an image of another canine flashed through my memories. My mother. Her dark red fur was slick with sweat as she quickly licked my tiny body clean, seeming like she was in a race with time. As soon as she was done, she leaned her head down between me and another tiny pup, moving her deep blue irises to each of us.

_Fae, Rayna. Live on._

That was the voice I had heard when I remembered what my name was. That was why it felt so calming—so full of love.

No, I wasn't just a dog.

I was a hellhound.


	7. Chapter 7

Voices. I was hearing voices in my mind, the words creating a light pressure against my skull. My vision still hadn't come back, but I could hear three different men's voices drifting through my head as the pain finally subsided completely.

_Who are you?_

_She can't be one of us._

_We can feel her._

_But how is it possible?_

_Maybe it's some kind of illusion magic._

_They were all killed!_

_Calm down. We need to figure this out._

I opened my eyes again and unsteadily jumped to my feet—all four of them. I heard the growl leave my throat before I even thought it through. I just knew that there were others there with me, and I needed to defend myself in my vulnerable situation. I just wasn't sure how to go about doing that.

Once I focused on who was in front of me, I realized that it was three more canines. I had a gut feeling that they were all hellhounds as well, but I wasn't going to get the chance to stop and ask them. They had all quit talking—at least as far as I could hear—and were standing ready to fight, their teeth bared in my direction and their eyes eyes glowing ominously. I wasn't sure if they had been growling since I had stood up, or if my growl had set theirs off, but I knew that I couldn't defend myself against the three of them if it came to a fight.

They were all three bigger than I was, and together, they could probably have devoured me. The one on the left was the smallest, but not by much. His black fur had brown undertones poking through, his shining mahogany eyes watching me expectantly as the growls ripped through his throat. To the right stood a lighter brown hound, his cobalt blue eyes glowing as he crouched down, seemingly ready to pounce once given the signal. The hound in the middle was the largest, but he was still only a few inches taller than the smallest one. His jet black fur seemed to be standing on end as he trained his deep, rust colored eyes on mine. He was the only one out of the four of us who wasn't growling. Unlike the other two hounds, this one was showing more curiosity than animosity.

Quickly thinking through my options, I decided to do the one thing that wouldn't guarantee my death. I turned around and ran.

_Hey!!_

_Stop!_

Without knowing why, I suddenly felt very confused. It was almost as though I couldn't figure out myself why I had run away, even though I knew exactly why I had done it. The feeling reminded me of the paranoia I had felt a few times earlier in the day, but this time I was fully aware of what was following me.

_We just want to talk!_

I could hear the three of them on my heels as their voices entered into my thoughts, once again with that same barely-there pressure. If they just wanted to talk, they wouldn't have been prepared for a fight, I thought to myself as I pushed my wobbly legs to go faster.

As fast as I thought I was going, the other three were that much faster. With no warning, one of them tackled me from behind, sending me crashing down to the dirt on my stomach.

_Dean, be careful!_

The hound who had tackled me—Dean, I assumed—jumped away from me then, just as I had turned my head back in an attempt to sink my teeth into the beige colored hound. Once he was off of me, I got back up and tried running again. I winced as pain shot through my back leg, realizing that I had come down on it wrong in the fall. I needed to push through the injury, though, if I was going to get away from the other hounds.

Before I realized what was happening, two of them had me surrounded as I tried to run. Dean was to my right, running beside me as he kept his eyes ahead of him. Glancing to my left, I noticed the two-toned hound inching his way closer to me as he kept my pace, almost like he was trying to trap me between himself and Dean.

When I turned my eyes forward once again, I saw the black hound jump. He had been behind me, but took me off guard as he pounced and landed in front of me, causing me to crash into him. I hit the ground hard on my side, but I couldn't get up afterwards like I had the first time I was sent tumbling. The large hound had me pinned down, his breathing heavy as he kept his steady gaze glued to me.

I made an attempt to yell at him, trying to tell him to get off of me, but no words came out. The only sound I heard was a barking noise coming from my own throat.

_Calm down._

I heard the words in my mind, the deep voice making an attempt to sound soothing as I thrashed under the other hound. I couldn't tell which one had said it, but I assumed it was the one holding me against the ground because of the strained way he had sounded while fighting against me.

I slowed my movements and tried to speak again, but still could only bark. Frustration grew inside of me as I realized I couldn't communicate with the other hounds. I didn't know how to speak to them like they were speaking to me. I started growling again as my mind swam, trying to think of how I could tell these three that I just wanted to find that tree sprite. I needed to know what happened to my mother and my sister, and I had a feeling that she would know.

_Who are you?_

That was a different voice—higher pitched than the first one. I looked between the three of them, but couldn't be sure if it came from Dean or the other one, both of which were standing on either side of me.

_You don't want to talk? Or have you lost your voice? Or maybe you're not actually a hellhound, so you_ can't _talk to us._

As the third voice spoke, Dean started pacing beside of me, keeping his eyes glued to me as I tried to settle my breathing once again. As I watched him pace, the sense of concern for my own self-preservation grew stronger. I also felt more on edge than I ever had. It was almost like the feeling was being forced into me instead of actually coming from my own emotions.

_Dean, you can feel her._

The deep voice again. I looked up to the hound above me and noticed that he was looking in Dean's direction. I thought maybe that would be my chance to break free of him, but as soon as I moved, his sharp focus came back to me.

_What's your name?_

I kept repeating my own name in my head, trying unsuccessfully to answer the hound beside Dean.

_Seth, I really don't think she can communicate. She's confused and scared more than anything._

The hound keeping me on the ground looked over to the black and brown one as his voice entered my mind again, giving the two-toned hound a name. Seth, Dean, and the big one who wouldn't let me up.

Seth walked closer to me then, moving his head down to look at my injured leg under the third hound. 

_Roman, she's hurt._

With Seth's words, the hound on top of me shifted his weight so that he could look at my leg. I hadn't even seen it myself, and I still couldn't see it thanks to Roman keeping his position above me. He had eased up his pressure, but not enough for me to escape.

_The blood. That smell._ Dean had moved beside Seth then, both of them assessing my wound. I suddenly felt more curious about what it was they were seeing.

Roman moved his gaze back in my direction, his eyes growing wide. _Who is your mother?_

All three of them started speaking fast then as their eyes darted between each other and me. I tried to keep up with who was talking, but I couldn't concentrate on which voice belonged to which hound after hearing what they were saying.

_It smells like Helena._

_But she was killed..._

_She was pregnant._

_There's no way he'd leave this one alive after killing Helena, assuming she had time to give birth before he got to her._

_He left us alive._

_Maybe she isn't Helena's. Or maybe he didn't actually kill Helena._

_We all felt her die, Dean._

_Not where she can hear._

My heart sank, allowing a deep sadness to settle in as their voices stopped, the slight push against my brain fading away with their words. If they were right about who my mother was, then that meant she was dead. Of course, who said they were right? Thinking back to the vision that had played in my memories when I realized what I was, I got a gut feeling that they were correct in their assumptions with the way my mother had been in such a hurry, telling me and Rayna to live on. There was a sliver of hope, though. Nothing was certain yet.

I internally screamed, trying to recreate the same pressure that I had felt while they were talking to me. _What happened to her?!_

When their heads all snapped in my direction, I froze. Had they actually heard me? I wasn't sure how I did it, but it appeared as though they had heard my outburst.

Roman's voice was the one who answered me first. _She was killed right before the rest of our pack was murdered._

_But that still doesn't explain how you lived._ That was Seth, if I had guessed them right. 

“This isn't what your meeting was supposed to look like.” A quiet voice spoke through the otherwise silent forest, catching all of our attention.

I turned my head as best as I could in the direction of the sound, finally seeing what I had been looking for the whole time. The tiny tree sprite, dressed in clothes made out of lush, green leaves, was hovering just inches from our group. The breeze from her wings fluttering quickly in the air made the sprite's short red hair appear to be floating around her head.

I started desperately trying to get out from under Roman then, feeling a great need to get to my feet for the oncoming conversation. When he didn't let me up, I began an attempt to talk to the tree sprite. Just like the first time, however, nothing but barks came from my throat.

The sprite flinched back at my outburst, so I reigned in my emotions, too afraid of her running away from me. 

Roman shifted his weight above me once again, finally moving to stand beside me instead of over me. He looked down to me as his voice entered my thoughts. _You're going to have to transform back to your human body to talk to her._

Transform back? The idea hadn't crossed my mind to return to my human state so that I could actually talk instead of just barking and hoping that the three hounds could hear my thoughts. Concentrating on the image of myself that I had seen in the mirror at the hospital, I tried to will my body to once again look like that instead of the hound I had turned into.

When nothing happened, panic started gripping at my heart. What if I couldn't turn back? I needed to talk to the sprite. I needed to know what information she had about my family.

I closed my eyes and pictured myself in the mirror again, trying to concentrate on what it felt like to have actual fingers and arms. Still, nothing happened.

_Can't you transform?_

I opened my eyes to see the three of them watching me as Dean asked the question. Concern filled my emotions, but that wasn't what I thought I should have been feeling. I was more frustrated than anything. If I couldn't talk to the sprite, how was I going to get information?

Trying a third time, I imagined the hound body lying down and my human body standing up, hoping that I could use that imagery to help focus my magic on what I needed to do. Encouragement flowed through me as I felt a tiny shift in my magic, but it quickly stopped and left me as the hound lying in the dirt.

Roman's head tilted to the side as he watched me. _You can't do it, can you?_

I was motionless, looking to the other hounds and focusing my attention on them instead, hoping I could get through to at least one of them again. I thought about what their voices felt like entering my thoughts, and tried to recreate that a second time.

_Please, ask her what happened to my mother._ I was begging, unsure if I was even sending the plea out to them the correct way. 

Suddenly, Seth began to glow. I felt a surge of power run through me, just like the tiny shift in my own magic. The difference, however, was that it was stronger than what I had done myself, and it wasn't my own magic that I was sensing. Without reason, I suddenly felt lighter, like part of my emotions had left me.

The feeling only lasted for a fraction of a second before the bright burst of light disappeared. Standing in the hound's place was a man wearing black pants, boots, and a black vest. Seth's human body, I thought as I watched him push the long dark hair out of his face. It looked like he had dirt streaking his forehead, but I wasn't sure why. He turned his bright brown eyes to the sprite then, his gaze curious.

“Do you know her?” Seth's voice sounded the same as it did in my mind, but he was speaking softly to the sprite. If I had to guess, I would say that he was trying his best to not scare her away.

“I know Fae. I've known her since birth.” The sprite smiled in my direction, the gesture warming my heart by just a few degrees.

“Do you know what happened to her mother?” Seth moved his gaze to me then, locking eyes with mine. He almost looked apologetic, but I couldn't be certain.

I slowly moved to my feet as I kept my eyes on the sprite, unable to put any weight on my injured back leg. When I realized that I wouldn't be able to stand up the right way, I decided to sit back down, careful to keep my leg out from under my body.

The sprite flew directly in front of my face then, a frown forming on her lips as she looked down to the blood running from my leg.

“I owed your mother a life debt. Instead of her taking my life, she asked that I save two more.” Her tiny voice sounded sad as she moved her emerald green eyes to meet mine. “I'll show you.”

She blew a gentle breath toward my eyes, reminding me of when she placed all of the new information into my head. Suddenly, my vision went white once again.


	8. Chapter 8

Once I could see again, the setting had changed. There were still trees everywhere, but there were slight differences. The leaves were changing color, turning shades of red and yellow. A different season. Autumn. I wasn't sure if I was seeing a different forest in a different time or if something had happened to the one we had been in. Nothing made sense.

As I moved my head to look around, I realized that my body felt lighter, almost as if I were floating in the air, hovering above the ground instead of sitting beside Roman with an injured back leg. I couldn't see the other three hellhounds who had been with me before, but I did notice what appeared to be an entrance into a cave. I caught sight of the tree sprite flying toward the opening, her wings moving so fast that I could hardly make them out. Tears were falling from her bright green eyes, her face contorted into what looked like fear.

Once she approached, I saw a dark red hellhound emerge from the cave, her deep blue irises watching the sprite intently. I instantly recognized the hound as my mother and my breath caught. Was she alive?

“Please, please help me!” the sprite cried out, her tiny voice panicked. “He's going to kill them all! I'll give you my life if you help them survive!”

My mother seemed to take in the sprite's words for a split second before nodding toward the smaller creature, a small movement that I would have missed had I not been so fully focused on her standing there, alive. As soon as she made the motion, the sprite turned around and took flight in the other direction, my mother right behind her.

Suddenly, my vision shifted. I was looking at a large tree with a hollowed out middle section, the fire colored leaves falling to the ground from the branches. There was a one-eyed demon—a cyclops—at the tree, swatting at another small sprite. The sprite was a male, and he seemed to be protecting whatever it was that was inside the hollowed out tree.

“Food!” the cyclops grumbled as he tried to catch the male sprite, succeeding in grabbing him by the ankle.

The larger demon pulled down on the sprite's leg, causing him to come crashing to the ground in a heap. With a sick laugh, the cyclops leaned down to pick up the sprite again. Lifting him by his wings, he held the small sprite above his mouth, the sprite struggling to get free as he was lowered toward the cyclops's sharp teeth. I wanted to go help the sprite, but I couldn't move. I couldn't even tell if I was in my own body. I felt nothing.

Before the cyclops could drop the sprite into his mouth, the beast was attacked from behind by my mother. She bit down on the back of his neck, drawing blood in an instant. The cyclops let out a roar of pain as he slung the sprite to the ground again, but my mother didn't stop. Fire erupted from her front paws as she started a tirade of attacks on the weaker cyclops. Eventually, he was nothing but shreds and ashes on the forest floor. I stared, my chest filling with what could only be pride at my mother's good deed.

The female sprite immediately went into the hollow of the tree, staying there for a few seconds before she hurried out to check on the male. He looked like he had a broken leg, and his wing was pretty messed up, but I got the feeling that he would survive.

“Thank you,” the female sprite said to my mother as she watched the hound shake the dirt from her fur.

“Mommy! Daddy! Is the monster gone?” I saw two smaller sprites fly out of the hole in the tree then, both of them unsteady on their wings. They couldn't have been more than a few months old, I thought to myself as I watched them head straight to their parents.

“I told you to stay inside.” My mother watched as the sprite hugged her children, then told them to go back into the tree until their father came to get them. The sprite's two sons both flew out of their mother's embrace, lifting slowly back toward the tree as they looked over their shoulders, watching my mother with curiosity.

The sprite looked to her mate, a knowing expression in his pale orange eyes. She then turned her bright green stare to my mother, her resolve set. The sprite knelt on the ground at the hound's feet, lowering her face to look at the grass beneath her.

“I told you I would give you my life if you protected theirs, and now it's time for me to keep my word.” The sprite tensed as she waited on the larger demon to take her payment, knowing that she owed my mother her life.

The depths of the hound's blue gaze studied the sprite before she was surrounded in a bright light that erupted to reveal her human body, much like what I had seen Seth do before. I stared at the woman standing in the place of the hound, the resemblance to my own reflection in the mirror at the hospital almost unnerving. Her dark auburn hair hung to the small of her back, just a few inches longer than my own. Our eye color wasn't exactly the same, but they had the same round shape. She wore no clothes, but she didn't seem embarrassed by it. 

Instead of moving to attack, my mother also knelt down on the ground. She still towered over the sprite, but I knew in my heart that the gesture itself was what was important.

“Get up,” she said, her voice silky smooth as she waited for the sprite to stand. She wasn't speaking the same language that I had heard since waking up, but I still knew what she was saying. More of the sprite's magic, I was positive.

The sprite slowly stood, still not as tall as my mother even while she remained knelt in the grass. She looked up with a curious gaze.

“You do owe me a life debt.” Keeping her calm expression trained on the sprite, my mother let a slight smile pass her lips. “But I'm not collecting today.”

Excitement passed the sprite's features, quickly followed by a frown. “Then when?” She asked, her voice no more than a whisper filled with doubt and a hint of fear.

“I can't leave the little ones with no mother. I'm not collecting until they are old enough to be on their own.” My mother stood back up then, turning her back to the sprites. In another burst of light, she was a hound once again, running back toward the cave.

I wanted to follow after her. I wanted to run in my hound body along side her, asking her everything that I needed to know about being a hellhound. But I still couldn't move. It was beginning to become clear to me that I wasn't seeing things as they happened, but rather memories. The sprite's memories. And I wouldn't be able to jump into her memories to have a discussion with the past.

After that scene, the setting changed once again. I was starting to feel nauseous, but I knew I had to hold on if I wanted to find out exactly what happened to my mother through the sprite's recollections. 

I glanced around at the scenery once again. It still looked just like the hollowed out tree from before, but the leaves were no longer falling from the branches. They were green and full of life, signaling a new season. Summer.

“Helena!” I heard what sounded like a young male's voice call out. That was the name that the other hellhounds had used when they were trying to figure out who my mother was. I guess they were right, I thought with disappointment. The realization hurt deep in my heart, especially since they had said that Helena had died. I had one tiny breath of hope that they had been wrong, but it was released with one name.

Bringing my focus back to the tree, I watched as a young male sprite flew from the hollow, looking almost identical to the father who had been trying to save his sons, if only a few hundred years younger. His shaggy blonde hair blew around his face as he flew forward, his orange eyes focused on something in front of him.

I turned my gaze to see what he was headed for, finding my mother slowly making her way toward the tree in her human form, gently holding something in the palm of her hand.

“It's nice to see you again,” she greeted the sprite with a smile as she laid down two wild blackberries. “Where's your brother?”

“He's still sleeping,” the boy said as he eyed the berries. “Is that for me?”

“One of them is for you. The other is for your brother.” Another smile passed her lips as she looked behind the boy, finding the mother sprite.

“It's nice to see you again, Helena,” she greeted my mother as she flew over to them. “And you've got gifts.” A light laugh filled the air as the sprite noticed her son watching the berries like they would run off. “Go wake your brother, and you two can have those.”

“Yes, mother!” he answered as he excitedly flew back toward the tree, his steadiness and speed worlds better since I had seen him fly after watching my mother defeat the cyclops.

“I appreciate all of the gifts you bring,” the sprite said, looking at my mother with a smile. “But why do you do it?”

“Because I grew attached to you and your family.” An honest, quiet answer.

“It isn't because you feel guilty about what you'll eventually have to do, is it?” The sprite's question didn't have any kind of accusatory tone to it. It was common knowledge in the old world that a life debt had to be repaid at some point. That was why it was also common knowledge that you didn't enter into one unless it was necessary. There was nothing for the sprite to be upset about, in her own eyes.

That information floated through my head as I watched the exchange between the hound and the sprite. I had never been told about life debts or demon deals, but I was sure everything I had thought was true. The sprite had placed it all into my mind for a reason.

“No, it isn't,” my mother assured her as she turned her focus to the hollowed tree. “I had my mother taken from me at a young age. I don't want to put them through that.”

“But I would rather put them through that than have them die,” the sprite said, her voice quiet as she held a small smile.

“You could have offered up anything else, and I would have helped. But you jumped straight to offering your life.” My mother moved her ocean blue eyes back to the sprite, looking puzzled as her brows furrowed. “Why did you do that?”

“Someday, you might have a pup. You'll realize then what it's like to want to protect it with everything you have, no matter what.”

Another scene change started then. More vertigo hit as I moved up in time once more, following the events that lead to my mother's death. Spring time flowers grew around the sprite's tree, letting me know that I had skipped Autumn and Winter since the last memory. The end was coming close, I could feel it. In my heart, a great sadness grew.

“Help me,” I watched my mother lay down at the base of the sprite's tree, her stomach swollen with child. Children. Me and my sister. It hit me that I was about to witness my own birth, but I couldn't feel amazed by that. I may have very well been about to witness my mother's death in the same breath. 

She was heaving air in and out of her lungs, struggling just to speak through her gasps. “They're coming.” She looked down to her stomach before turning her wild eyes back to the sprite. “He's coming.”

The sprite quickly flew down from the tree then, blowing her magic around my mother's body. Her heavy breathing eased up, but it still wasn't back to normal.

“The babies are coming,” she told the sprite, obviously pushing, trying to bring me and Rayna into the world. “But Balor is coming.”

“What? How close?” the sprite asked as she took a large leaf and used it as a fan to cool off my mother, her own moves growing frantic as she tried to help.

“I don't know, but soon. Please, protect them,” she said through grunts. “Forget me taking your life. I saved your two children. Please, hide mine from Balor.”

“I can use a trick. It will hide them from sight. I didn't have the time or the knowledge to do it when you saved my children, but I can do it for you now. I can conceal them until you come back.” The sprite was speaking quickly, obviously unsure of what she could do to help the woman in labor.

“No, conceal them until Balor is no longer in this world. He will hunt them down if he knows they live. I won't be coming back.” She took a deep breath before changing her form, turning back into the hellhound to give birth.

Before the sprite could say anything else, the hound let out a quick sigh of relief as she looked down to her bottom half. One small pup was lying on the ground, already attempting to move. The black fur of the pup almost had a blue hue to it as my mother cleaned her off.

That had to be Rayna, I thought to myself as I stared at the small hound, watching as she moved her violet eyes around aimlessly.

Not a minute later, a second pup was lying beside the first one. Deep red fur. Dark violet eyes. It was me. What happened next almost had me in shock.

My mother leaned down to clean the tiny version of me off, then she moved her head between the two pups. I was sure of what she was saying to us as she looked from one pup to the other. 

_Fae, Rayna. Live on._

That was the first insight I had gotten, right after I transformed into my hound. That was the first of my memories, her voice giving us names.

My mother glanced in the sprite's direction for a split second before turning her gaze to Rayna. Touching her nose to Rayna's smaller one, she closed her eyes. Less than a second later, Rayna had started glowing. When the glow disappeared, there was what appeared to be a human infant laying in the pup's place. Moving her nose to me, my mother repeated the process, turning me from my hound form to my human one.

“They'll be harder to smell in that form,” I heard the sprite mumble as she watched my mother nuzzle the two babies one last time.

As soon as my mother raised her head, she looked up to the sprite and nodded. The sprite returned her nod and watched with a deep sadness as my mother ran toward a cloud of smoke rising in the darkening blue sky. Balor was already fighting another hellhound, and the howls could be heard echoing through the trees.

I gasped as I realized what was happening. The dream that I had before I woke up at the hospital. 

I watched as the sprite flew over my tiny body, circling me and Rayna. She was keeping her eyes trained on the rising smoke coming through the trees, probably hoping for my mother's safe return. All the while, she was working on concealing me and my sister, the glittering magic falling from her wings and onto us. 

The sprite started to cry as another howl ripped through my heart. She waved a hand above Rayna, then moved to my small body to repeat the motion. As soon as she was done, she clapped her hands together. With the sound, both infants disappeared. In their place was nothing but a patch of grass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters tonight! I think I'm actually to the point where I can post two chapters every week without catching up to myself [I've already gotten thirty chapters written. lol.], so we're gonna try that out for a while! lol.  
> I hope you all enjoy it! And I hope I'm doing a decent job in getting everything from my head and into words, because sometimes I feel like it's a jumbled up mess, even though my sister/editor says it isn't. xD


	9. Chapter 9

I gasped as fresh air suddenly flooded my lungs. My body felt heavy once again, and I could feel the earth underneath me, gravity holding me down to the ground. I felt the sun's warmth coming from above the trees in the forest once more, letting me know for sure that I was back in my own body. Without thinking, I moved my hands to my face and felt wetness on my cheeks. Tears. I had started crying at some point through the sprite's memories.

The fact that I was back in my human form hadn't even crossed my mind until I tried to stand up and stumbled back to the ground, my injured left leg throbbing from the pain. I ignored it, wanting more information now that the sprite was here and seemed willing to answer my questions.

Turning to find her still hovering near me, I let my words get ahead of my thinking, needing to get all of my questions out so that I could get answers. “So she died? But where's Rayna? Did you hide us together? We were never woken until now?” The questions all flowed from my mouth, my own voice catching in my dry throat as more tears threatened to fall. “How long ago was that? Is Rayna still hiding somewhere? And who are you three exactly? More hellhounds, right?”

I turned my head so fast that my vision started getting blurry, snapping my gaze to who I assumed was Roman knelt beside me. He and Dean had also transformed back into their human bodies, and all three men were watching me intently, speechless.

“You figured out how to transform back.” Seth finally spoke as he stood beside who I thought was Dean, looking down to me as he crossed his arms over his chest, his bright brown eyes watching me as though he thought I was going to fall over again.

“I didn't figure out anything!” I snapped, aggravated when no one answered any of my questions.

“It was her mother's influence.” I moved my gaze to the sprite as she spoke, her voice thoughtful as she looked to Seth. “She witnessed her mother change her form for her as an infant in my memories, and so it happened here in this reality.” That explanation wasn't the one I was most interested in, however.

“We're from your pack.” The voice was the one I had pegged as Roman, and he was finally answering at least one of my questions. “Couldn't you feel us?”

I turned to him instead of the sprite then. He was knelt down on the ground beside me, wearing clothes that almost matched Seth's. Black vest, black pants, and black boots. His dark sienna colored eyes studied me, his muscular arms moving up, almost like he wanted to make an attempt to steady my swaying body as I tried to keep an upright position. When I flinched away from his warmth, he moved his hands back, running one through his long dark hair instead.

“I don't know what you're talking about!” I darted my eyes around the group then, not focusing very long on any one of them. I wasn't sure what Roman meant by “feel” them, and I didn't know anything about a pack. I hadn't seen these three men in the sprite's memories. I hadn't seen any other hellhounds except for my mother and my sister. But, for some reason, my instinct told me that Roman was telling the truth. We were born to the same pack of hellhounds. However, the fact that he may have been telling the truth about our pack didn't quell my anger. “From what I saw, my sister and I were born, then we were put to sleep while our mother went to die at the hands of a demon named Balor!”

“Your mother asked me to hide you and your sister as soon as you were born until Balor was gone from the world,” the sprite explained in a calm tone, even though I had already seen that in her memories.

“That was how she survived Balor's attack,” Roman said in a low voice as he looked up to Seth, answering one of the questions they had asked each other while trying to figure out who I was.

“We also survived Balor's attack, but he only let us live out of cruelty. He thought three pups wouldn't be enough to bother him anymore. We proved him wrong, with the help of some others.” That was Seth, speaking as he crouched down beside me on the opposite side of Roman. He smiled as he placed a hand on my shoulder in what I was sure he thought was a comforting touch, but I moved my arm in a jerky motion that hopefully got the point across that I was not comfortable with contact from anyone.

“So this demon, Balor, he's gone now, right?” I asked, trying to calm my harsh tone. I wanted to make sure that whatever monster had killed my mother and the rest of the pack of hellhounds was no longer a threat.

“He's long gone,” Dean answered, a smirk sliding across his lips as he wiped at some dirt on his cheek with the back of his hand.

“Do you know where Rayna is?” The question was directed to anyone who may have had the answer.

“We don't,” Dean said as he stood in front of me and slowly tilted his head in the sprite's direction, his shaggy, light brown hair falling around his face with the motion. I noticed then that he was also wearing the same kind of clothes that the other two were dressed in, and wondered if there was some kind of dress code in their pack. My pack?

Dean's voice was an odd mix of accusation and curiosity as he continued, his sapphire eyes trained on the flying creature in between us. “But she might know. If we have one more member, we need to find her and bring her home.”

I turned my attention back to the sprite then, waiting on her to give me an answer.

“Your sister sleeps on this mountain no more. She was taken away by a man.” The sprite didn't seem upset by that. She was only relaying the information, her face almost appearing proud as she lifted it to the sun's light the slightest bit.

“So she's alive?” I asked, my own heartbeat starting to speed up. I had family left, and I needed to find her.

“She is. I haven't seen her since she left my mountain, but the man who took her had no ill intent. That was why I removed the concealing spell on her when he approached. She was on the other side of the mountain, making it harder for anyone to track your magic since you were separated.” She let a soft smile slide to her lips then. “I gave her the same information that I gave you—all of your short memories—and let her go. You haven't felt her yet?” The last question was directed to the men.

“She hasn't transformed.” Roman turned his attention to the sprite as he spoke, his voice almost concerned. “We've only felt this one. How long has her sister been awake?”

The sprite's smile fell as her brows scrunched together. “She has been gone for almost a year now.”

“She hasn't transformed in a year?” Dean asked, his voice a higher pitch than it had been. It was almost like he couldn't believe that she hadn't taken her hound form yet.

“If you think about it,” Seth started, casting his gaze up to Dean, “neither of them had transformed for thousands of years before they were woken.”

I almost choked on air at his words, and my own question came out as a mere squeak. “Thousands of years?” 

I had been lying on the mountain, hidden by a spell, for _thousands_ of years? The thought sent my mind spinning. How much of my life had I wasted? Half? More than half? How long did hellhounds normally live? I knew next to nothing about my own species.

“Yes, I would say it's been at least three-thousand years since Balor attacked the pack,” Roman said from beside me, moving his eyes to the ground in front of him as his expression grew hard. “But it does get hard to keep up with how much time passes after so long.”

“So I'm at least three-thousand years old?” I asked, trying to figure out how much time I'd even have left to spend with Rayna.

Roman looked back up to me then, almost cracking a smile at my question. “Don't worry. We're still young. We have at least another ten-thousand years to go, assuming nothing kills us before then.”

“But to not have transformed for that long must have some kind of effect on her, right?” Dean asked, bringing the subject back to where I wanted it the most.

“It probably will once she transforms for the first time,” Seth answered, moving his hand to stroke the short beard on his chin. 

I remembered the pain when I had transformed, and wondered if that was normal. 

“It hurt.” With my confession, all four creatures turned to look at me.

“Transforming hurt?” Roman asked, his eyes moving from me to Seth, like he expected Seth to know why that could have been.

“Horribly.” I remembered the agonizing pain that ripped through me when my magic started moving, changing my shape without my consent. I also remembered what my mind had been yelling at me. “But I was fighting it.”

“Why were you fighting it?” Dean asked as he moved his hands up in the air like fighting the transformation was the exact wrong thing to do. It probably was.

“Because I had no idea what was going on!” I admitted, my frustration growing once more. “I didn't know what was happening because I didn't know what I was.” I stopped then, an idea hitting me. “Rayna must not know what she is yet either. I had no idea.” Thoughts started building in my mind. What if she was somewhere far away and never figured out what she was? Would we ever be able to find her? I had never even talked to the woman before, but she was my sister, and I needed to get to her as soon as I could.

“You didn't know what you were?” Roman asked from beside me. “How did you transform if you didn't know what you were?”

“I don't know!” I snapped at him, not meaning to be so short with everyone. I took a deep breath before continuing. “I just know that I woke up somewhere in these mountains yesterday and had no memories. I had a dream of the sprite flying over me with tears in her eyes and knew that I had to find her again to get answers. She had given me information about this world, but I didn't know everything.”

As soon as I spoke the dream out loud, I realized that the sprite was right before. She _had_ given me all of my short memories in that one dream. It wasn't her fault that I only had about half a minute worth of memories.

“You woke up just a little farther down the mountain, where you had been hidden.” The sprite's words surprised me. I didn't realize that I had made it so close to where I had woken up in my running outburst. “Also,” the sprite started as she flew a little closer to me, holding her hands together over her chest in a nervous gesture, “my magic won't give you all the information that I embedded in it at once, in fear of it being too overwhelming. I gave you the language, but the rest works by sight. You'll be learning new things just by sight for quite some time before you unlock it all.”

I had guessed that much about her magic. I had noticed with the elevator at the hospital that I had to actually see things in order to know what they were. It made sense that I had no idea what I was until I actually saw my hound body under me. Rayna must not have seen hers yet.

“If your sister doesn't know what she is then we definitely need to find her,” Dean said as he started pacing behind the sprite, his head turning down to the ground just as the hound's had done before. “If she has a demon scent but can't use her magic, she's nothing but a target to stronger demons.”

“We need to make sure we aren't infecting more demons with whatever is killing the villages in Scotland first, though,” Seth said as he stood and walked over to Dean, putting a hand on the other man's shoulder to stop his quick back and forth walking.

“Seth's right,” Roman agreed from beside me. “She's obviously still alive, even if she hasn't transformed. We would feel her death. If we go to find her now, and it is a sickness that we've been exposed to, we'll just infect her with it. It's bad enough that we've infected Fae and the sprite, if that's what it is.”

“I can't catch an illness in my forest,” the sprite said as she looked over the three men, her eyes squinting the slightest bit, seemingly trying to decide if they had some kind of ailment. She didn't seem convinced. “The trees keep our kind healthy.”

Their words made no sense to me, however. I didn't know what kind of sickness they could have been talking about, but I wasn't going to let that take priority over finding my sister.

“What did the man look like who found her?” I asked, calming my breathing while waiting on the sprite's answer.

“I'll show you,” she said as she flew even closer to me again, her wings fluttering fast as she touched my forehead with her small hand. Her fingers just barely met my hairline, the heel of her palm lying directly between my eyebrows.

As soon as she made contact, an image flashed through my mind. A face I was sure I had seen before. Dark hair shaved at the sides, a short beard running the length of his jaw line growing longer at his chin, a mustache above his full lips, and a round, pointed nose. His eyes were visible, showing green irises with the color of tree bark swimming through them as well. The eyes that I hadn't gotten a chance to see before because they had been covered by his round sunglasses, even in the coffee shop we had gone into together.

“I know him! He wasn't far from here! I met him in the city and he bought me a doughnut!” My heart began racing as I jumped to my feet, ignoring the burning sensation coming from my injured leg as I tried to make a run for the bottom of the mountain and back towards the coffee shop that I had visited earlier. 

That was Marty! He knew where my sister was, and I knew he had been at the coffee shop just earlier in the day. How long ago had that been? It couldn't have been more than a few hours. Maybe six, depending on the sun's position in the sky now as opposed to where it had been then. Could he still be in town? I needed to go find him and ask him where Rayna was.

“Hold on!” Roman said as he quickly reached for me, wrapping his arms around my waist to preventing me from going any farther. I grunted when I came to a stop against his forearms, the air leaving my lungs from the impact. “You need to get that cleaned up and eat first.”

“No! I need to go find Marty! He'll know where she is!” Suddenly, I remembered him saying that I looked like a dear friend of his, and I knew he must have been talking about Rayna. Hope filled me as I tried to pry Roman's arms away from me.

“Fae, you need to take care of yourself first.” Roman's grip grew tighter as I fought him harder, but the pain in my leg was wearing me down quicker than I wanted to admit.

“If he had no ill intention, and he helped you get food, then Rayna is probably safer with him than she would be with us right now,” Seth said, his tone gentle as he approached me. Involuntarily, I started growling at him.

“If you're going to transform, so are we. And I don't think you can fight us all off while you're injured and barely know what you are.” Dean walked up beside Seth then, a lighthearted smile on his face. “Not that we want to hurt you. We only want to help.”

“She's safe for now. We need to make sure you're safe, as well.” Roman almost whispered the words into my ear as he eased his grip on my empty stomach, letting his hands fall to his sides slowly, almost like he was ready to lunge for me again if he needed to. 

I leaned all of my weight on my right leg, relieving some of the pain in my left one when I did. Between my fatigue and my injury, I knew Dean was right. I would never be able to get away from them. With a frustrated sigh, I also realized that Roman was right. I needed food. I needed water. I needed to get my leg cleaned up so that it would heal.

But could I really trust that they'd help me find Rayna afterwards?

_Yes._

The word was barely a whisper in my mind—an instinct so strong that I had no choice but to give in. I was a hellhound, and I had a pack. Hellhounds didn't turn on their pack-mates. They helped each other. They saved each other. They were fiercely loyal. They would help me find Rayna. 

We would find her, and we would bring her home to us.


	10. Chapter 10

“Are we taking her back to Scotland since we can't take her to the house in case it's a disease?” Dean asked the other two men, putting his hands in the pockets of his black pants as he looked from Roman to Seth. I wasn't sure where Scotland was, but I assumed I would gain some kind of information about it once I actually saw it.

“I guess we'll have to,” Seth answered with a sigh as he turned his mahogany eyes to me, looking from my injured leg to my face. “I just don't know what kind of first-aid kit the faeries would have had.”

“I'm more worried about it being a demon who killed them,” Roman's voice sounded from where he stood behind me, still ready to catch me if I tried to run again. I wasn't going to.

Remembering the sickness they were talking about, I wondered what they had been in the middle of when they had come to find me. Were they all infected with something? Were they dying? Did they pass the illness on to me? They didn't seem so sure about the whole thing, and neither did the sprite. Her reaction to them talking about some contagious disease earlier made me doubt that they had contracted anything.

I also wondered how they had found me in the first place. If they were going to Scotland, what made them stop here just after I had transformed for the first time? Were we close to Scotland? It couldn't have been coincidence that they just happened to be passing by at the right time. Maybe the sprite told them where to find me, I thought as I looked over to the tiny creature hovering wordlessly behind Seth and Dean, just a spectator at this point.

I needed more answers. I had too many questions rolling through my mind. “What kind of sickness are you talking about? How did you even know I was here?” I looked between Dean and Seth, watching as Dean removed his hands from his pockets and place the fingers on both of his hands against his temples, opening his mouth like he was about to answer before he was interrupted.

“We'll have to explain that later, once we get to Scotland,” Roman said as he moved to stand between Seth and Dean, his eyes scanning the forest behind me as his fists slightly clenched at his sides. “But I'd like to get away from here as soon as we can.”

With his words, Dean and Seth both followed Roman's gaze, Dean dropping his hands back to his sides. Their faces all three grew somber as they looked behind me. I turned to see what could have been the cause of their mood shift, careful to keep my weight off of my left leg. All I could see past a few more green trees was a clearing in the forest, the patchy grass littered with wild Spring flowers. The sun shone through the clearing, giving it a peaceful ambiance as the birds twittered about. I didn't see anyone else there, so their reactions were making me nervous. I turned to see if maybe they had turned their attention elsewhere, but they were still as statues, unmoving as the tension rolled off of them.

“How many times were we here, with her so close, and never realized?” Seth seemingly asked no one in general as he kept his eyes focused on the clearing in front of him.

“Three.” Dean's reply was short and quiet.

“One.” Roman's voice caused the other two to look in his direction, sympathy evident in their gazes.

Dean moved his hand to Roman's shoulder, patting the larger man on the chest with his other palm. “But your back now, brother. Have been for seven years.”

From their short conversation, I gathered that they had been to that clearing before, but it couldn't have been for anything good with the way they were talking. I wondered what Dean had meant by Roman being back. So many questions.

“Let's go,” Dean said, rolling his head and shoulders as if he had sore muscles.

The three of them looked in my direction then, and Roman tentatively reached his hand out to me, like he was showing me that he wasn't going to actually grab for me. I realized that it was dirty, like he had been digging something with his hands, but that wasn't why I didn't immediately reach for it.

“We'll have to transport. I'm guessing you don't know how.” His voice wasn't condescending as he motioned for me to take his hand, but it still made me feel _less._ Less of a hellhound for not knowing what I was capable of. Less of a demon for not being able to use my own magic. Less of a pack-mate and more of a pup who needed babysitting. “We'll have to teach you this, but for now, you'll have to hold on so we don't lose you.”

“Don't lose me?” I asked as I moved my gaze from Roman's serious face to the arm he held out in front of me, still not taking his open hand.

“We don't know what will happen if you let go, but we'd rather not find out,” Dean said as he also moved his arm out in front of him, closing his fist with dirt covered fingers as he placed his hand beside Roman's outstretched one. “So you need to hold on tight.” 

I still didn't move.

“You don't have to actually hold a hand,” Seth said, repeating Dean's motion with his closed fist on the other side of Roman's, his also looking like he had been digging. “Just so long as you're making contact somewhere with at least one of us.”

It was like they were giving me the choice of which one of them I'd rather take hold of. I just wanted to learn how to transport myself, though.

I closed my eyes and sighed, opening them again as I reached my hand out to wrap my fingers around Roman's wrist instead of his palm. In my grasp, he turned his hand palm down and slowly balled his fingers, making a fist just like Seth and Dean were doing on either side of him. 

“I don't know if this will be the same since you're actually a hellhound,” Seth started as he looked at my hand in the middle of theirs. “But the last person we transported always got nauseous and dizzy.” 

“Even though she was a healer.” Dean finished for him as he looked between Seth and Roman, a small smile playing at his lips. A healer getting nauseous was a ridiculous thought, if I assumed that a healer was as the name stated.

Seth also let his mouth turn up into a smile then, but I noticed Roman keeping his eyes trained on our joined hands, seemingly focusing.

“Fae,” the sprite called for me as she flew closer once again, her voice quiet as she locked her eyes on mine. “Be careful. If you need any help finding Rayna, I'll be right here. You'll be able to come to me no matter where I'm at now, once you learn to do this.” A smile broke on the sprite's face then as she looked down to our group of hands in the middle of our bodies. She nodded her head once, saying, “Good bye for now,” and flew away toward the clearing that had made the men uncomfortable, her wings making the smallest _whoosh_ noise as she went.

Seth cleared his throat then before looking to the other two.

With his look, I felt a tingling sensation start to run across my skin. My magic became a dancing flame once again, moving in a way that I had never felt before. It was almost like the flickering of candle light when a small breeze blew across it, threatening to put it out but not actually having the power to go through with it. My vision went black for a split second as my body once again felt weightless, just like it had while I was seeing the sprite's memories. Transportation, I thought with amazement as I let Roman's magic carry me through space with him.

Suddenly, I noticed my magic disappear all together. My breath caught when I realized it was gone, my heart rate speeding up in panic; but just as soon as I felt it leave, it was back. The whole experience couldn't have lasted longer than two seconds from the time we left the clearing to the time my feet hit the hard ground once more, my weight coming back. And I wasn't dizzy.

My vision cleared up right after the magic came back, showing me a different setting than the one I had been in with the three men before. The chilly night air blew across my skin as my eyes adjusted to the dark, a stark contrast to the warm afternoon sun we had just been in. The only things illuminating us were the stars and the full moon, casting its light over our group in a bright glow.

“Was that supposed to happen?” I asked as I looked to Roman's face, referring to my magic disappearing on me.

“Is _this_ supposed to be happening?” A male voice from behind me spoke, causing me to drop Roman's wrist and spin toward the noise. I accidentally spun on my injured left leg, causing a bolt of pain to jolt through my body. Quickly moving my weight back to the other side, I regained my composure.

I turned ridged when I noticed three more people before me. I didn't know what species they were, or if they were friend or foe, so I immediately tensed up, wishing I knew how to transform at will. If it came down to a fight, I would be no help at all just yet.

“Calm down. It's okay,” Roman said after seeing my reaction, his voice smooth. “They're friends. Family.” I jerked my head up to see him behind me, raising both of his hands toward me as he looked between me and the other group.

“Who is that?” the only woman of the group asked from between the other two men. Her voice was more curious than malicious as she studied me, pushing a strand of light blonde hair behind her ear. The green in her eyes shone out against the brown there as the moonlight hit them.

“She's hurt,” the shorter of the two men said, moving a step closer to me as he looked down to my leg. I realized his eyes matched the woman's, along with the color of his short hair. “Edge, come look.”

“We need to get that cleaned up.” The third man—was his name actually Edge?—came to stand right in front of me then, crouching down to get a better look at my injury. That was the first voice I had heard that had startled me.

I recoiled away from him as he slowly reached a hand in my direction, but I found myself bumping into Roman's chest with the backward motion. Roman reached his hands up and took my shoulders to steady me, but it made me feel trapped. Luckily, Edge had stopped moving and decided to just look at my wound instead.

“This is Fae,” Roman started as he carefully released my shoulders, obviously feeling the tension in my body. “She's from our pack.”

“From your original pack?” Edge asked as he flipped his wide hazel eyes up to Roman in surprise, the long blonde hair falling away from his thin face to reveal dirt streaks across his cheeks. His features also matched the other two, making me wonder if this was a group of siblings. The thought made my heart squeeze. I needed to find my own sister.

“Yeah,” Roman answered as he watched Edge stand up in front of me and take a step back, his body towering over mine. “Fae, this is Edge,” Roman said as he moved beside me to motion to the long haired man. 

“It's nice to meet you, Fae,” Edge said as he held his hand out toward me. In the back of my mind, I knew he wanted a handshake, so I slowly moved my hand toward his and shook it once before quickly letting go of his warm fingers.

“This is his brother, Christian.” Roman pointed to the shorter haired man first, then to the woman. “And this is their sister, and Dean's wife, Renee. They're a part of our pack.” 

Dean's wife? I wondered if that was the same thing as a mate. Maybe the sprite didn't know that term, I absentmindedly thought as I studied the other two people. The fact that they were wearing jeans and different colored t-shirts ruined my theory about our pack having a uniform, thankfully. I also wondered how they could be a part of our pack if Roman, Dean, Seth, Rayna, and I were supposedly the only ones who survived Balor's attack that day. 

They both stepped forward and extended their hands, and I gave them the same thing I had given Edge. One quick shake, then I was done.

“It's nice to meet you, Fae,” Renee echoed Edge's words with a smile before turning her eyes to Dean, who had moved from behind me to walk toward her. “But how is that possible?”

“I'll have to explain it later, but just trust us that she's one of us,” Dean told her as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and leaned from one side to the other, taking the woman with him in an over-exaggerated hug while she smiled at him. He let her go before draping one arm over her shoulder and turning back to us, a large grin on his face. Wife was definitely the same thing as mate, I thought as I watched the way Renee looked up to Dean, her eyes shining while she smiled.

“She's not been brought into the new pack yet, which is why Renee didn't feel her when we did,” Seth explained as he looked over to Renee. I wasn't sure what Seth was talking about when he said I hadn't been “brought into the new pack yet,” but I wanted to find out. I had so much to learn.

I realized then that they had said they could feel me more than once, talking about my emotions to each other as we were struggling in the forest. Was that one of the things that just happened in a pack?

All of the new information was overwhelming me, and I suddenly felt exhausted. I had been among the living for two days, and in those two days I had gathered so much knowledge that I couldn't process it all. I was suddenly glad that the sprite's magic worked by sight. If I had suddenly known all of this at once when I first woke up, I would have gone insane.

“Are you hungry?” Edge asked as he looked down to me, his tone light as a smile settled on his face. He motioned behind him, toward the other man, before saying, “Christian caught a red deer earlier, and we've been cooking it on a few of the faeries' stoves since Renee got back to the house.”

“I'm glad someone thought about food,” Roman said from behind me, his voice sounding relieved. “But before we can eat, we need to get Fae's leg wrapped up.”

“I'll go see what I can find as far as bandages go, if you want to clean the blood off,” Seth said, motioning to Roman as he turned to walk toward one of the many stone houses around us. 

“I think I saw a few barrels of water around the back of one of these houses,” Christian told them as he pointed to one of the small stone houses. “I'll go bring one inside here if you want to take her in.” He looked at Roman as he motioned to the door of the house closest to us.

Roman looked down to me then, his rust colored eyes studying my face. I wasn't sure if he could tell how overworked my brain was at that moment, but I was tired of learning new things. I just wanted to get all the information I already had figured out, and maybe eat a whole deer myself. 

“Can you walk into the house?” he asked me, looking from me to the door. It was only a few paces away, so I was sure I could manage it.

I gave him a small nod as I turned in the direction of the wooden door, limping my way into the house.


	11. Chapter 11

Seth had come back with some cloth that he had said was part of a sheet from another bed in one of the other houses. Christian had brought in a short barrel of water, letting me drink at least a fourth of it while he checked the progress of the deer in the stone stove in the house we were in. He had said something about having to separate the deer into a few different stoves to cook it all at once because of its size, but I hadn't been paying much attention to him. I had chugged the liquid so fast that it had almost made me sick, but it felt so good against my dry throat that it took a lot of effort to save some for the others to wash their hands with.

I was in the floor at the small table, the top of it the same height as my chest while I was sitting. We had pushed a couple of small wooden chairs to the side against the walls because none of us were small enough to sit in them without breaking them. I watched Roman as he dipped a clay bowl into what was left of the barrel of water that Christian had brought in. He was scooping some out so that he could use it to clean my leg without dirtying the whole barrel. 

Edge was cross-legged on the floor at the table across from me, speaking to Seth beside him about how the water smelled clean and safe to drink. Dean and Renee were both perched on the edge of the small bed in the corner, the two of them just barely fitting on the side of the hand made bed. They were chattering about something that I wasn't paying attention to.

I hadn't said much to any of them since arriving at the village, but they seemed to be giving me my space. I had heard Seth earlier as he explained my situation to the other hellhounds, telling Edge that I had been frantic when they had found me. He had said that I'd been in shock because of everything that had happened. He was probably right. I hadn't been able to focus on any one thing long enough to really think about it except for the fact that I had a sister out there somewhere who likely had no idea what she was.

“Can you roll your jeans up so I can get to it?” Roman asked, catching my attention as he crouched down beside me, motioning toward my leg that I had stretched out in front of me away from the table.

Now that I could actually look at my leg in the candle light that brightened the room, I could see why the others were so concerned with getting me cleaned up. My jeans had a rip in them where whatever I had landed on had cut them open, and there was blood soaking through to the outside of them, leaving a large red stain on the shin of the fabric.

I moved my knee up so that I could reach the leg of my pants and pulled on the jeans, lifting the one part slowly where the blood caused it to stick to the wound. Once I rolled the material up above the blood at the bottom of my knee, I could see the actual damage.

My skin was torn, a long gash running from the middle of my shin down to the top of my tennis shoe. It wasn't too deep, though, only going through the skin and not into the muscle. I could hear Roman breath a sigh of relief while he studied it. Turning my gaze to him, I watched as he dipped a piece of the cloth into the water in the bowl and turned his concerned eyes up to me as he reached forward, ready to get the blood off.

“I can do it,” I told him, reaching to take the cloth from him. I hadn't meant to jerk it away from him, but I knew by the look on his face that I had grabbed it too fast. His eyes widened the slightest bit as he held both of his hands up in surrender. I just didn't want anyone else touching the wound.

I gently rubbed the blood away from the edges of the cut, stopping myself from wincing as the cool water touched the sliced skin. After wiping all the blood away, I laid the stained rag back into the bowl of water on the floor beside Roman. From his spot in front of me, Roman lifted a dry piece of torn sheet in my direction. 

“Do you want to do this, too?” he asked, holding the fabric toward me in his palm.

I looked at it, confused at first, until the thought hit me. I needed to wrap it around my leg to keep the injury clean. I gently took it from his hand, being careful not to yank it away from him like I had accidentally done the wet cloth, and slowly wrapped it around my shin, making sure it covered the entire gash. Once I was certain that it was covered, I tied the two ends together, leaving the leg of my jeans rolled up above it.

“We'll find you some new pants, or wash those out somehow, if you want,” Roman told me as he moved to sit with his legs crossed in front of him instead of in the kneeling position.

I hadn't even thought of getting the blood off of my pants. I didn't own another pair, so I wasn't sure what I was going to do as far as getting them clean went.

“I'm sure she could fit into some of mine,” Renee started from her spot on the bed beside Dean, “but I didn't bring any extra, and I can't go back to get some.” She sent me an apologetic glance, her hazel eyes going down to my wrapped up shin.

“Is this where you all live?” I asked, wondering why she didn't have clothes around if they lived here.

“No, we actually live in Italy,” Edge answered from his place at the table across from me, reminding me of what Dean had asked Roman and Seth earlier. He had asked them if they were taking me back to Scotland since they couldn't take me to their house. Scotland was where we were now, I was sure.

“So these are just empty houses in Scotland that you're staying at?” I questioned, unsure of why they'd decided to stay in houses that seemed too small for them.

“Well, they are now,” Dean answered, his voice lacking any humor.

“We were asked to come here,” Roman said, explaining a little better than Dean had. 

“Why were you asked to come here?” I wondered, curiosity eating at me. I may have finally been about to get some more answers. “Does it have to do with the sickness and demon you were talking about earlier?” They had mentioned some kind of contagious sickness and a demon attacking others more than once, and I was sure that was the reason they were holed up in this small cottage.

Seth was the one who answered from his spot beside Edge. “A cat sìth came to us and asked for help.”

“She said that four different villages, including this one, were killed by something, but no one knows what.” My head swiveled toward Roman as he added on to Seth's answer, leaving me no time to wonder what a cat sìth was.

“So we came to figure it out,” Dean said, making me mentally question why it was any of their concern. Couldn't they have just told the cat sìth that they didn't want to possibly risk their lives?

Roman started speaking again then. “We found all of the faeries who lived in these houses dead in their beds, withered away to nothing.”

When I jerked my head in the direction of the bed that Renee and Dean were sitting on, Dean almost laughed. I wasn't sure what exactly a faerie was, but I didn't want a dead one in the same room as me, no matter how small it must have been to fit in the bed comfortably.

“Don't worry, we buried them,” Dean said, explaining the dirty state of their clothes and bodies.

“It didn't look like a full out attack,” Seth continued the story, his voice almost frustrated. Understandably so, I thought.

“So you think it may be some kind of disease?” I asked whichever of them wanted to answer.

Roman released a sigh. “We can't rule anything out yet.”

An obvious thought occurred to me then. “Is that why we came back here instead of going to Italy? So that we wouldn't spread it if it _was_ a disease?”

“Yeah,” Renee looked to Edge as she spoke, a small smile appearing on her face. “Edge has a wife and a child at home, so we didn't want to risk them getting sick in case it was contagious.”

I nodded, understanding their decision to bring me here instead of to their house. I wouldn't want a child to be infected with some deadly virus, either. I would never get over the guilt of causing a kid's death.

“Once we get all this figured out, we'll find Rayna and then perform the ritual to induct both of you into the new pack,” Roman said, sending a surge of hope through me. The sooner we figured out what was happening to the villages, the sooner we could find my sister.

“The food's done,” Christian announced as he took the last of the deer meat out of the stove to set it on top of the stone. He had cut it up into six separate pieces, obviously not expecting a seventh hound to be joining them.

Roman stood up, his head almost touching the top of the short ceiling, and pushed his long black hair out of his face before looking from the food on top of the stove back to me. His expression turned thoughtful for a moment before he said, “You can have part of mine if you want, Fae.” He had obviously seen me mentally counting out the chunks of deer as Christian had been bringing them in from the other houses.

As if my stomach wanted to agree to that itself, it started gurgling.

“I can cut some off of everyone's so that we can all share,” Christian said as he smiled in my direction, picking up a small knife from the stone counter top beside the stove.

“When's the last time you ate, anyway? I think even the dead faeries could hear your stomach growl just then,” Dean said, almost laughing again as he stood up to make his way over to the food.

“I had a doughnut this morning, and an elf gave me a few berries earlier,” I answered quietly, not liking all the attention I was getting.

“Is that all?” Renee asked me as she joined Dean in front of the stove.

“That's all I've eaten since I woke up,” I admitted, my gaze sliding back to the cooked deer.

“Wait,” Seth's eyes grew wide as he looked over to me from his spot at the table in front of me. “You're saying that, in your three thousand years of existence, all you've eaten is a doughnut and a few berries?”

“That is...” Dean couldn't even think of a way to finish his sentence, so he just quickly shook his head, instead saying, “No wonder she looks so scrawny.”

I hadn't even thought about that fact because I hadn't known how long I had been asleep, but when Seth put it like that, it sounded pretty unbelievable.

“You know what, just go ahead and give her at least half of mine,” Renee said as she pointed to one of the deer steaks, looking at Christian with the knife. “I had a lot to eat before we left, so I should be good with just half until we can find some more food.”

“Yeah, give her half of mine, too,” Roman said from in front of me, also looking over to Christian.

“If the big dog is giving half, then so am I,” Edge chimed in from beside Seth before standing up and walking toward the door of the cottage. “Beth just transformed, so I'm going to give her an update and tell Chloe goodnight. I'll be back in a few.”

I watched as he stepped outside, a fond smile forming on his lips. Thanks to that smile, I knew he must have been talking about his wife and child. Could he speak to them the same way I was speaking to Roman, Dean, and Seth telepathically in the forest? Was there a distance limit to how far away anyone could be for the communication to work? I wasn't sure.

Before I could even think to ask, Christian was sitting a plate of food on the table in front of me, and all of my questions disappeared momentarily while I devoured the deer.

 

Everyone had decided to give me half of their portion of deer, which made me feel uncomfortable at first, but after I had started eating I couldn't make myself stop. For the first time since waking up, my stomach finally felt full. I was also glad that they didn't seem upset about sharing their food. I had been weary about the three new hounds, but I was beginning to see that they were just as friendly as Roman, Dean, and Seth seemed to be. Of course, I had only known them all for a handful of hours, so I may have gotten the first impressions wrong. But from the moment Roman told me that the three of them were from my pack, I had a gut feeling that I could trust them.

As Edge took everyone's wooden plates from them to place them on the stone top of the stove, Roman moved from his position on the floor beside me.

“Are we all staying in this one house for the night?” he asked as he looked around the group, the rest of them looking to one another for suggestions.

“I think we'd be more comfortable if we took separate houses,” Dean said from the edge of the bed, obviously noticing what everyone else had. 

It would be cramped for all seven of us to try to sleep in the confined space of the tiny stone cottage. As it was, we could hardly walk through the one we were in without bumping into each other. Trying to lay down would be like one big pile of hounds.

“With as close as they are to each other, I think that would be the best idea,” Seth agreed with a nod of his head. “Tomorrow, we can start looking to the neighboring villages, like Renee suggested. They may be showing symptoms of the illness, or the killer may be among them, and we'll notice it.”

I liked that idea. I liked any idea that got this situation taken care of quickly so that we could move on to finding Rayna.

“Either way, that sounds like our best bet for finding something to start with,” Edge agreed as he stretched his legs under the table, almost knocking his feet into my injured shin. When I felt him get close, I silently flinched back, ready for the pain of him hitting my injury. Luckily, he noticed what he had almost done, and he stopped, pulling back quickly.

When I flinched, I noticed Roman's gaze quickly snap in my direction. I watched him as I felt Edge pull his feet back under his own chair, but he had moved his attention to Edge. Roman was watching the other man, a look on his face that I couldn't identify. He didn't look mad, but he seemed like he wanted to make sure that Edge hadn't accidentally hurt me.

“Renee and I can take a house,” Dean suggested before anyone else could speak, raising his eyebrows and smiling at Renee, the look almost silly.

“Of course,” Seth said with a grin as he waved his hand dismissively at Dean. “Edge, you and Christian can share one if you want. Roman and I can share one with Fae, since she's our problem right now.”

“Problem?” I asked, not liking the way that sounded. 

The word “problem” meant something bad, as far as the sprite's knowledge told me. It was something unwelcome that needed to be dealt with. I wasn't a problem. I was brought to the village by Roman, Dean, and Seth, not because I wanted to be brought here, but because they wanted me to go with them. If they only saw me as a problem, I needed to go ahead and leave them to find my sister on my own. But the thought of leaving them already had me anxious.

Everyone turned to look at me, not used to my offended tone. 

“No, no, no, no, no.” Seth started back-tracking. “Not problem. Problem was the wrong word. Responsibility? Is that better? Or—”

“Seth,” Roman stopped him from eating any more of his foot, putting his hand up toward Seth before turning his attention to me, his expression gentle. “We don't see you as a problem. Seth just meant that since we want to help you look for your sister, and since you are both only connected to us right now, it would make more since for you to share the house with us.” He slowly moved his eyes to Renee then. “Unless you would rather share one with Renee if you're uncomfortable with sharing one with me and Seth.” 

I just started at him, wondering why I'd rather share with Renee. Even though I thought that I could trust her, I didn't have that same gut feeling about her that I did about Roman, Dean, or Seth. Even if Seth had used the wrong word, now that Roman had explained it, it actually made sense that I stick close to them. 

“You know what, I think I'll take first watch,” Seth said as he stood up and walked toward the door. He smiled in Roman's direction, an almost nervous laugh coming from him. “You just pick a house and I'll let you know when I'm ready to trade shifts.”

I watched as Seth ducked out the door, knowing that they must have been on watch in case a demon came back to the village. If it even was a demon that had killed the faeries. Seconds later, a similar feeling to the paranoia that I had gotten a few different times in the forest came back.

“Don't worry, Fae,” Dean said, pulling my attention toward him instead of the odd feeling. “He doesn't usually say things like that. We're all just wound up since we figured out you existed. And that you have a sister.” A big smile grew on his face as he went on. “And here we were thinking we were the only lucky ones to survive that day.”

Slowly, I turned my gaze from Dean over to Renee, who was watching me, waiting on my decision about where I'd be staying for the night. I moved my eyes to Roman then, who was giving me the same patient look that Renee was.

“I think I'll just stay with you and Seth, if that's still okay,” I told him, still unsure of why I would be uncomfortable with that. The sprite's magic brought nothing to mind as far as that went, so I went with what my gut was telling me to do. Stay with _my_ pack-mates.


	12. Chapter 12

“We'll be right next door,” Roman called to Dean as we stepped out of the small cottage and back into the cool night air of Scotland.

I hobbled behind Roman, trying not to put too much weight on my injured left leg that I still had wrapped up. It already felt better than it had initially, but it was still so sore.

“Do you want me to help you?” Roman asked as he stopped in front of the door he had just left through, looking down to me while holding out a hand.

“No,” I replied as I walked past him toward the little house beside the one we had eaten in. “I think I can manage.” It was only a few steps to the next house, and I was sure I could make it.

I heard him sigh in defeat behind me as he dropped his hand and followed, rushing up to open the door to the house we'd be sleeping in before I got to it. I looked up to him and frowned, unsure of why he was being so helpful this whole time. He had tried to clean my cut for me, and he had offered to help me walk every time I had to move. Was it all just because we were from the same pack? I didn't have much experience with... well, anything. But especially not with being around others, so I wasn't sure if that was just one of his characteristics or if he just thought that I couldn't take care of myself. Maybe he thought I was a problem.

“Thank you,” I told him before walking past him and into the house, this one looking almost identical to the previous one. 

There was one small bed in the corner, the white sheets made up as though whoever used to live here was expecting company. The wooden table against the opposite wall was just a little narrower than the one we had sat down to eat at, the hand carved wood a darker shade of brown than what the two chairs were made out of. There was also a stone cooking stove in this house, as well as a few white, unlit candles sitting on top of it.

“How is your leg feeling?” Roman asked as he watched me limp over to sit down beside one of the too-small chairs, closing the door behind him. “You can go ahead and take the bed. I'm not going to even try to fit into it.”

I stood back up and made my way to the bed, not arguing that he should take it instead. I could tell it wouldn't help, and he made a good point.

“It's a little better than it was, but not much,” I answered him, looking up to see him still watching me. “And thank you for letting me have the bed. But where will you sleep?”

His lips twitched like they wanted to turn up into a smile, but he wouldn't let them. “I can sleep on the floor. It's actually not that bad in my hound body.”

“I need to learn to do that whenever I need to,” I mumbled, more to myself than anything, as I reached down to take off my shoes and lay them on the floor at the foot of the bed.

“There are a lot of things we have to teach you,” Roman said as he walked to the candles on top of the stove, turning his focus to them instead. 

I watched with amazement as he touched his finger to each one of the wicks. They instantly started burning with the contact, the fire of each one reminding me of my barely moving magic. The faint glow bounced off of Roman's features, letting me clearly see the square angles of his jaw under the short beard growing there, his full lips, set with concentration as he focused on lighting the wicks, and the muscles in his arms and back, the ridges moving as he went on to the next candle. I got a strange feeling in my stomach as I watched him, but I couldn't put a name to it. It wasn't like anything I had felt before, and the sprite's magic wasn't identifying it for me.

I sat up straight on the bed to face Roman, ignoring the odd feeling he had given me. Meeting all of the other hellhounds had mentally worn me out, and I was glad to be in a quieter place for now, but there were still things I needed to know. I thought that maybe Roman would be willing to answer some of my questions that I had been keeping track of throughout the day now that is was just the two of us. 

I took a deep breath to steady myself before speaking. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” His answer came fast as he turned all of his attention to me, moving to sit down beside the faerie-sized table. He pulled one knee up to rest his arm there, leaving the other leg straight out in front of him. With his height, his foot almost reached all the way over to the bed that I was sitting on.

“What did Seth mean earlier when he said that I hadn't been brought into the new pack yet?” Out of all the questions I had compiled, that one was the one I wanted an answer to the most. It had to do entirely with me instead of any hellhound magic or abilities.

Roman took a deep breath before diving into the answer. “Our original pack was all killed by Balor. As you know, the only known survivors are now me, Dean, Seth, you, and Rayna.” He paused, waiting on me to nod before going on. “Edge, Christian, Renee, and Edge's wife, Beth, were all in a separate pack until about five years ago. We found their pack and we all decided to join together to make one bigger pack and improve our magic.”

Increase your numbers for safety. That much made sense to me. That information had been placed in my head by the sprite, a quick survival tip.

“How did that improve your magic, though?” I asked, not understanding how a bigger pack would effect each hound's magic abilities.

“The bigger the pack, the more magic we have as a unit and as individuals. Our magic feeds off one another, and it grows with the pack,” he explained, pausing like he needed to find the right words. “When it was just me, Dean, and Seth, we could only use our fire once or twice in a battle before we became too exhausted to use it anymore. Any less than three hounds, and they wouldn't be able to use fire at all.”

“So now that you've got more members of your pack, you can light candles?” I asked, knowing that it meant I wouldn't be able to do that if I wasn't connected to the bigger pack.

“We can do more than light candles,” he said, a glow forming in his eye for a split second.

“So, if I just decide to join this new pack that involves them, I'll be a part of it, too?” I asked, wondering what was so hard about that. Maybe becoming a part of the new pack would help me to at least be able to transform if it made my magic stronger.

That hint of a smile glanced Roman's lips again, but he wouldn't let it stay. “There's a blood ritual that has to be performed in order to join the packs together. You weren't involved in that, so you aren't technically a part of the new pack yet.”

“Oh,” I breathed, knowing that I should have figured it wasn't just as simple as saying I was in the new pack with them all. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to be a part of the new pack, though. I wanted to find Rayna and make that decision together with her.

Pulling my focus back to him instead of my thoughts, Roman went on. “You still have the connection to me, Dean, and Seth. We were born into the same pack, so we're with you no matter what. You just can't feel the others. We can do the ritual with you once we get back home, though. This time, Chloe will have to take part in it.”

I realized then that Chloe must have been Edge's daughter. She and Beth were the two that Edge had stepped outside to talk to right before we ate.

“Why didn't Chloe take part the last time?” I asked, curious as to why the child didn't have to join in on the ritual.

“Because she wasn't born yet.” This time, the smile on his lips lasted a little longer. “She's only a year and a half old now.”

“So is she just automatically a member of the new, combined pack?”

“She is. She was the first one born into it.” Roman nodded his head as he spoke.

I found that interesting, and wanted to know even more about how the pack magic worked.

“What are you talking about when you say 'feel'?” I asked, remembering how they had thrown that word around quite a few times before. 

Roman made a small _ah_ sound as he moved to cross both of his legs in front of him, still keeping eye contact with me. “When we transform, the others can feel it. Right now, I can tell that Seth is in his hound form, because I can feel him.” He pointed toward the outside of the house, presumably in the direction that Seth was in. “If Dean were to transform right now, we'd be able to feel him as well. You'll be able to tell them apart once you get used to each hound's spirit.”

“They each feel different?” I didn't think I had felt any of them transform, but I had been so overwhelmed by my own transformation in the forest that I wasn't sure what I was feeling. 

“Yeah. It's hard to explain, but you just _know_ who it is after so long.” Roman stood up, pushing his long black hair away from his face as he squared his shoulders in my direction. “Tell me if you can feel this.”

Suddenly, Roman burst into a bright white light for less than a second. Just as soon as the light appeared around him, it disappeared, leaving the large black hound standing in his place, his russet eyes watching me for a reaction. 

The same paranoid sensation that had run through me more than once while I was in the forest looking for the sprite, and once again right after Seth had gone on “look-out” duty, came back to me as I watched him transform. It wasn't exactly the same as any of the others, but it was close enough for me to tell that I must have been feeling the others transform each time. The feeling I had gotten from Seth had been a light pressure in my mind, almost seeming like it was lightly running around me. Roman radiated a heavier feeling, and it made me think of an animal stalking its prey. Quiet and ready to attack when needed.

Not two seconds later, the feeling intensified, mimicking exactly the last two times I had felt it in the forest. All three of them must have transformed during those times, and they were all three transformed now, I thought, realizing that Dean must have changed shape after feeling Roman's shift.

I tried to differentiate between the three of them then. They were starting to all blur together after they had all three changed forms, but when Dean's spirit was added to the mix, I got the feeling of wild, pent up energy needing to be set free. 

Suddenly, the dark canine in front of me shook his head before erupting into light once more, disappearing to be replaced with Roman's human body. When he shifted back, I felt the pressure leave, just like when I had felt Seth change forms in the forest. I couldn't feel his actual magic move like I had felt Seth's, though. I thought that maybe it was because I was in my hound body then, but I wasn't this time.

The pressure in my head lightened up once again then, and I knew that it was Dean who had regained his human body. The only one left was Seth, the energy precise as it swam through my mind.

“Could you feel it?” Roman asked as he continued watching me, waiting.

“I did. Dean transformed, too,” I told him, proving that I had felt them all. I was surprised that I had been feeling them the whole time, but just didn't understand what it was.

“He did,” Roman confirmed for me. “He and Seth both thought something was wrong when I transformed without warning.”

“Did you tell them everything was okay, and that you were just trying to teach me what I should probably already know?” I hadn't meant for my words to be so self-depreciating, but I could tell by the way Roman's gaze changed that they were.

He started slowly shaking his head, his eyebrows rising in the middle as he moved to sit down beside me on the edge of the bed.

“You shouldn't already know this because you were never taught before,” he said, his voice growing quiet. “It isn't your fault that you had to be hidden away to save your life.” He moved his arm like he was going to reach for me, but decided against it, just like he had done in the forest.

Deciding to change the subject, I looked back up to him to ask some more questions.

“The way you guys were talking before, you could sense my emotions, too.” I recalled Roman telling the others that I was scared and confused when they had found me and began asking questions, before I figured out how to speak to them.

Roman nodded his head. “Yes, but we can only do that in our hound bodies. If we're both in our hounds, we can communicate telepathically, and we can feel each other's emotions.”

That explained a lot of the feelings I was getting in the forest. There were some emotions that I knew I felt, but I also knew they hadn't been coming from me. Like the confusion when I had run away from the three hounds, and the edginess I felt while watching Dean pace back and forth when he was accusing me of being an impostor hellhound.

“When we felt you transform for the first time, we were all confused.” Roman reached his hand up to stroke his beard once as he spoke, looking toward the night sky in the window of the cottage before turning back to me. “We were all already in our hounds, and the three of us felt you, but Renee couldn't. We felt your fear and your confusion. You were angry, too.”

“Is that how you found me?” I barely leaned toward him as I listened.

Roman nodded his head. “When we felt you, all we had to do was focus on your magic and your energy, then we were able to go to you.”

“What about the transporting?” I asked, moving on to my next big mystery. “It felt like my magic left me for a second or two, but then it came back. Is that normal?”

“It is,” Roman answered, moving so that he was angled on the bed, facing me. “When you move like that, you have to focus on either the energy surrounding the place you want to go to, or focus on the energy of the person you want to go to.”

I watched him as he explained, listening carefully so that maybe I could learn that trick soon.

“You send your magic there first, and your physical body follows right afterwards. That's why we can't just go to a new place or a new person without first being there or meeting them to feel out their energy. With the exception of you, of course. We could clearly feel your energy through the pack's bond, even though we'd never met you before.”

I thought about that for a moment before sighing, raising my head to look to the stone ceiling of the house as I leaned back on my elbows on the bed. “There's a lot of things I have to learn.”

“We'll be here to help you every step of the way.” Roman said as he mimicked my motion beside me, turning his gaze to me instead of the ceiling. “Don't worry, I'm sure you'll catch on to everything quickly.”

“I haven't even figured out how to change my form yet.” I had gone full circle in my thoughts.

“You got close to it earlier when you were trying to go back to your human body,” Roman said, an encouraging tone in his voice. “We could all feel it.”

I thought for a moment about that one time, how my magic seemed to move, but it obviously wasn't enough. I remembered what it felt like when Seth had done it, and wondered if I would ever get my magic strong enough to accomplish what seemed so simple for them. I was just as weak as a newborn pup at this point. 

“How did you learn to do it?” I asked Roman as I sat up to look at him.

He straightened up before releasing another sigh. He was obviously getting tired, and I was keeping him awake, but he was keeping his patience as he answered. 

“That's the thing,” he said. “Hellhounds learn to change their form at an early age. That's actually probably the first bit of magic that a hellhound pup learns to control because of the fact that some humans like to get brave and hunt demons. We have to blend in from a young age, so we have to learn to transform early.”

“So I shouldn't have much of an issue learning that, since it's an easy thing, right?” I asked, gaining the tiniest bit of hope.

Roman turned his gaze to the floor then before looking back up to me, almost like he didn't want to say what he was about to say. “Normally, the mother hound will change her pup's shape for her at first. Once the pup figures out what that movement of magic feels like inside her body, she can initiate it herself and make the transformation without her mother's help.”

“But my mother's not here...” I heard my own voice drop with the realization. That was why it looked like he didn't want to tell me that last part.

“I'm sorry.” His voice was strong, sincere.

“Can't you do it for me?” I asked, gaining back a sliver of hope. “Or Edge's wife? She's a mother. Does it have to be a mother?”

This time, Roman did place his hand on my knee, but I didn't flinch away from the warmth. “It has to be _your_ mother. Only your own mother can control your magic until you're old enough to do it yourself.”

Defeated, I asked, “How will I learn it then?”

Roman removed his hand from my knee before standing up and turning back toward me. “Maybe if you feel us transform enough, you'll get the feel of what your magic should be doing. That's the closest thing I can think of without actually being able to use your magic for you like your mother would have.”

The only problem with that idea was that I couldn't feel their actual magic move when they transformed unless I was already a hound. I could feel their transformations, but I couldn't actually feel their magic like I had felt Seth's. I would just have to remember that feeling and work on copying it, I thought to myself, setting my first goal.

“I think it's time we get some sleep now,” Roman said as removed his own shoes and placed them beside mine, then went to sit against the wall across from the bed.

“Hey, Roman.” Before he could transform, another question came to mind. He turned to look at me again, waiting for me to go on. “What was Dean talking about earlier when he said you were back? Where did you go?”

He turned his attention to the floor in front of him then, his voice dropping in volume, his eyes seeming to transport to a dark past. “That's a long story. One that I don't really like talking about.”

I left it at that, not wanting to push him after all he'd already told me. It was obviously a painful memory for him, so I didn't want to make him relive it. Instead, I took the answer quietly before watching him transform again, feeling his presence once again in my mind.

And, for some reason, that pressure made it easier for me to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually meant to post a chapter Friday since the Super Showdown was happening, but things happened and I wasn't able to. But here's two new chapters tonight! I hope you enjoy them! =D


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